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Auckl And Alumni mAgAzine | Autumn 2008The universiT y of

Celebrating 125 yearsmaking a difference: ngā Pae o te māramatangaThe language of mathematics

� | The university of Auckland

Ingenio – The university of Auckland alumni magazine

Autumn 2008 ISSN 1176-211X

Editor: Tess redgrave

Photography: godfrey Boehnke

Advertising manager: don Wilson

Design/production: vanda Tong, mustika mcgrath

Proof reading: Bill Williams

Editorial contact detailsIngenio communications and marketingThe university of AucklandPrivate Bag 92 019 Auckland 1142, new zealandlevel 10, fisher Building 18 Waterloo Quadrant, AucklandTelephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext 84149 Facsimile: 64 9 373 7047email: [email protected]/ingenio

How alumni keep in touchTo ensure that you continue to receive Ingenio, and to subscribe to @auckland, the university’s email newsletter for alumni and friends, please update your details at: www.alumni.auckland.ac.nz/update Alumni Relations Office The university of Auckland 19A Princes street, Private Bag 92019 Auckland 1142, new zealandTelephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext 88723email: [email protected]

Copyright Articles reflect personal opinions and are not those of The university of Auckland. no parts of this publication may be reproduced without prior consent of The university of Auckland. All rights reserved.

©The university of Auckland 2008

Cover photo Auckland university college graduates of 1913. Photos courtesy of alumna vivienne cooper (nee dellow).

fourth from left front row: kenneth dellow (BA 1912, mA 1913). see his story on page 8.

in this issue . . .letters to the editor 4

University news

Times Higher ranking 5

Business students win 5

inaugural Poet laureate 5

Celebrating 125 years

Alumni ties 8

university life as it used to be 12

from the 1970s 14

2008 distinguished Alumni Awards 16

our 2008 distinguished Alumni 17

defining the future 19

opinion 20

Features

ngä Pae o te māramatanga 22

lending a helping hand 26

Talking of mathematics 28

Anna kavan’s “real” new zealand 30

Prosecuting rwandan war crimes 32

Regular sections

Alumni snapshots 33

Alumni news 34

Art 36

Books 37

sport 38

student life 39

12

22

36

8

Ingenio Autumn 2008 | �

due to students who are able to enrol but whom the Government will not fund.

The decision to limit the intake into undergraduate programmes has led to the concern that this will disadvantage students from school leaver groups that are currently underrepresented in the University – Māori, Pasifika, those from low decile schools and students with disabilities. Many students from these groups and schools, of course, already do well and will continue to find a place in the University. However, it is true that irrespective of inherent ability and potential, proportionately fewer students from disadvantaged communities have the educational opportunities that enable them to gain the qualifications required to be admitted to a University.

The challenge for us will be to identify those talented students best placed to benefit from The University of Auckland experience. Many of our faculties already have limited entry – Business, Law, Engineering and Medical and Health Sciences are cases in point – and they employ a number of schemes to assist students from underrepresented groups to enter and succeed in their programmes. However, we would all acknowledge that none of those schemes is perfect and further research will be needed to devise means of

accurately identifying students with potential who may have been disadvantaged by socioeconomic or other circumstances. We must also acknowledge that many students from disadvantaged backgrounds do not make it past year 11 of secondary school and thus have little opportunity for a tertiary education unless they return as “second chance” learners. The University intends to keep a path open for mature students who will be carefully selected into our academic programmes.

Selecting students is an international issue. Universities all round the world, constrained by resources and wishing to offer the students they admit the best possible education, seek better ways to reconcile equity and excellence. This University is committed to developing ways of meeting these dual goals and will not place one above the other. We are determined to be a university known for the quality of our students and staff, but we are equally committed to ensuring that we welcome and support all those of ability, irrespective of their personal circumstances.

STUArT MccUTcHEon

The University of Auckland’s Strategic Plan 2005 -2012 commits us to creating “equal opportunities for all those of ability to succeed in a university of high international standing”.

The question of how the University should select and admit students in a fair way so that systemic disadvantage is addressed has been the subject of much discussion within the University and beyond over the last four months. The debate has arisen most directly because of a decision by the University council, supported by the Vice-chancellor and Senate, to manage student numbers by placing maximum intakes on all undergraduate programmes commencing in 2009. This has its origins in two important decisions, one by the University and the other by the Government.

First, in 2006 the University council approved a new Strategic Plan, one that had been developed early in 2005, consulted on, and then confirmed in 2006 after further consultation. A key component of the plan was that the University would actively restrict growth, aiming to increase its student numbers by only one percent per annum and shift the balance of its student body to increase the proportion of postgraduate students. This decision was premised on two observations: at nearly 40,000 students, The University of Auckland is already larger than most of the leading universities in the world, and when we benchmark ourselves against leading universities we find that our proportion of postgraduate students – a key component of academic excellence – is low by international standards.

Second, the Government has through the current tertiary reforms moved away from the so-called “bums on seats” model to one which restricts funding to each institution – and hence the number of places each can offer. This shift is also intended to enhance the quality of new Zealand higher education. The new funding system was actually put in place after the University had issued its 2008 Prospectus, making it impossible to limit the 2008 student intake. As a result of this our University will, in 2008, have a shortfall of at least $2 million

From the Vice-ChancellorA commitment to excellence and equity

The kindness of Aunt DollyI was most interested to read your article “Aunty Dolly’s domain” in the recent Ingenio (Spring 2007 issue, pages 30 -31).

In the 1950s I came to Auckland as a part-time student, and had difficulty obtaining board. one of my friends took me along to Aunt Dolly’s, who looked me over, and agreed to give me a room out the back, and board and breakfast. I was teaching at the time and the arrangement suited me as I could study either in the University Library or the Auckland Public Library in my spare time.

I had a room which was adequate but had no lock on the door so I had to put a chair behind the doorknob at night. There was also a hole in the floor. It was very safe, for all that, although I was the only young woman in that sort of annex. The rest of the clientele were mostly ambitious young men, struggling to study and further their qualifications, or an odd but interesting assortment of elderly, retired men. They all kept their eye on me as well as Aunt Dolly. I can remember her serving up her huge breakfasts – with dangling long grey plaits of hair, and in a dressing gown – or at least that’s what comes to mind. It is such a long time ago that this picture could be a figment of my imagination.

Yes, I remember the old ladies there – playing cards in the afternoons, dressed in their flowing, old-fashioned flapper-age clothes. They were rather sweet.

Finding lodgings for a naive girl from the wide spaces of the Waikato farmland was far from easy and I appreciated the kindness of Aunt Dolly. Actually I didn’t know her surname until I read your article – she was just “Aunt Dolly” to me!

Thanks for the reminiscences. Christine McSporran, BA 1959, DipEd 1963.Mt Maunganui

Send your thoughts to:Tess redgraveEditorIngeniocommunications and MarketingPrivate Bag 92019 Auckland 1142 new Zealand

By email: [email protected] Fax: 09 373 7047

Preference will be given to letters that address the content of the magazine. The editor reserves the right to edit letters for style and content.

LETTErS To ThE EDiTor

� | The University of Auckland

Apology In the Spring 2007 Ingenio (see “Global careers”, page nine) we incorrectly stated that alumna carly Arnold (Bcom/BE 2000) was “General Manager of EasyJet, Europe’s largest low-cost airline famous for its cheaper than cheap fares (sometimes as low as 99p)”.

At the time of writing, carly was in fact General Manager for EasyJet’s operations at London Luton Airport (and was also based there), but was not the only General Manager at EasyJet. She also clarified that ryanair, another large European low-cost airline, is more typically associated with 99p fares in Europe.

carly has recently left EasyJet to take up a new role with Infratil’s European airport group as Group General Manager of Performance. She is responsible for identification and delivery of new products and efficiency improvements, sharing best practice and strategic organisational development.

UniVErSiTy nEwS

in briefTop awardsTwo University professors have been awarded the highest honours in new Zealand for science and medical research.

renowned neuroscientist Professor richard Faull of the Department of Anatomy with radiology has been awarded the royal Society of new Zealand’s rutherford Medal for his contribution to the advancement of science, while Professor Innes Asher, Head of the University’s Department of Paediatrics and a consultant physician at Starship children’s Hospital, has been conferred with the Health research council’s Liley Medal for her contribution to medical and health sciences.

AnniversariesThere have been numerous anniversaries on campus in recent months: Auckland University Law review (AULr) celebrated its 40th birthday in november with a party at the Fale Pasifka attended by 70 former editors and contributors, among them chief Justice Dame Sian Elias (editor in 1970).

The AULr was founded in 1967 hard on the heels of the new LLB Honours degree to give its students an outlet for their research work – and that remains its purpose today.

The Faculty of Medical and health Sciences celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. Although the first lecturer in Anatomy at the University was appointed in 1884, the School of Medicine wasn’t formed until 1966. In 1968 the first intake of medical 60 students arrived, with 53 completing the course and graduating in 1974.

waipapa Marae marked its 20th birthday in February with a week of celebrations. At the heart of these were two events: a gala dinner with guest speaker Dr Patu Hohepa, a former head of Mäori studies and a former Mäori Language commissioner, and a panel discussion of what facilitator Matiu ratima called “not a history, but histories or stories of the Marae”. one of the storytellers was Hone Edwards, a student protester who focused attention on the need for the Marae in the 1980s.

“We weren’t coming to the University just for the degrees,” he said, “but were very much aware of the bigger political picture.”

Today the Marae is at the heart of University life, providing an important focal point for Mäori students.

The University of Auckland is again the only new Zealand university ranked among the world’s top 50 universities, according to global rankings published by The Times Higher Education Supplement.

The rankings, which came out last november, are based on peer and recruiter review, the proportions of international staff and international students, the ratio of staff to

students, and citations per staff member. The THES-QS methodology changed from the

previous year but that has not had a marked effect on the University’s ranking, which was 46th equal in 2006, and 50th in 2007.

The University of Auckland was also first among new Zealand universities in the Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings released last year.

Auckland highest ranked nZ university

Distinguished poet and Associate Professor of English Michele Leggott has been named the inaugural new Zealand Poet Laureate 2007-2008.

A prolific writer, Michele has published six books of poetry and edited five anthologies of poetry and criticism. Her first collection, Like This?, won the PEn First Best Book of Poetry in 1989 and Dia (Auckland University Press, 1994)

won the 1995 nZ Book Award for Poetry. Michele is the founding director of the

new Zealand Electronic Poetry centre (www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz ) which is a major gateway to new Zealand poetry (see interview with Michele in Ingenio Spring 2006).

The Poet Laureate Award recognises writers who have made an outstanding contribution to new Zealand poetry.

inaugural Poet Laureate


Auckland Business School students have won two prestigious international case competitions this year – hard on the heels of a string of wins in recent years.

In February, Auckland won the inaugural 2008 champions Trophy case competition, beating the winners from the top six international competitions in 2007. A month later they won the prestigious Marshall International case competition in Los Angeles, where their client was the mighty Los Angeles Times and the challenges it

faces from ageing readership and web-based delivery channels.

Auckland’s proposed strategy for the Times included creating an express edition of the paper and reaching out to untargeted markets, such as Los Angeles’ large Hispanic community by translating the paper into Spanish.

The competition brought together teams from 30 of the world’s leading universities, including carnegie Mellon and Wharton in the United States and universities in Europe, Asia, Australia and new Zealand.

Business students win againFrom left: Khay Shern chan, carl Li, Brendon Potter, Sunny Gu, Patrick Hadfield and Brook Aspden.


Celebrating 125 years on 23 May 1883, The University of Auckland was founded as a constituent college of the University of new Zealand.It was initially housed in a disused courthouse and jail and began with four professors and, in its first year, 95 students studying Arts and Law.

At the college’s opening, in what is known today as old choral Hall, the Governor of new Zealand, Sir William Jervois, said the work of placing the advantages of a university within the reach of every man and woman of Auckland “is one the importance of which it is almost impossible to over-estimate. It is work that will, I trust, influence not merely the immediate neighbourhood and the present generation, but also indirectly the whole colony, and that for all time”.

Today, 125 years later, The University of Auckland is new Zealand’s largest and most comprehensive tertiary institution placing the advantages of a university education within reach of some 38,000 students each year –


not only from Auckland but from throughout new Zealand, and from 85 countries around the globe.

When Auckland University college began it was primarily a teaching and learning institution; there was little, if any, research and many students attended classes part-time at night while working during the day.

By contrast, today the University is the most significant research organisation in new Zealand and is ranked among the top one percent of universities in the world.

To mark its small but auspicious beginnings the University is holding year-long 125th Jubilee celebrations during 2008. A Jubilee theme will extend to many regular University and alumni functions while the main celebrations are centred on May Graduation.

In the following pages (pages 6 -15) Ingenio celebrates the University’s 125 years.

To find out more about Jubilee events and activities go to www.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/about/uoa/history/125jubilee/125jubilee.cfm

Top left: The University’s first home – a disused courthouse and jail in Eden crescent. Top right: The new state-of-the-art owen G Glenn building housing the Business School. Bottom left: Auckland University college Graduation Parade 1911. Bottom right: University of Auckland Graduation Parade May 2007.


CELEBrATing 125 yEArS

For a growing number of alumni, attending The University of Auckland is a family tradition that spans

several generations. here Ingenio tells the stories of four families.

When 81-year-old alumna Vivienne cooper (nee Dellow) was poring over family papers recently she discovered an ancestral link to the University which extends back to its founding.

“In 1883 my great grandfather the reverend Thomas Buddle was on the Auckland University college council,” she explains. “He was a Methodist missionary who came to new Zealand in 1840 just after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, and when the University of new Zealand was established he had a seat on its senate [1874 -1880].”

reverend Buddle’s stay on the Auckland University college council however, was brief. He died on June 26, 1883, just a month after the college opening. nonetheless, the missionary would have been pleased to know that three generations of his family have since graduated from The University of Auckland with a member of the fourth generation likely to enrol next year.

In 1909, the first of reverend Buddle’s descendants, grandson Kenneth Dellow, enrolled at the University to study Latin, maths and chemistry while simultaneously holding down a teaching position at Auckland Boys Grammar.

Scan the black and white photos of Auckland University college graduands in 1912 and 1913 and there is Ken Dellow (BA 1912, MA 1913) sitting proudly among them (see Ingenio cover photo).

“capping ceremonies in the old choral Hall were exuberant occasions,” Ken was later to write in a paper for the University’s classical Society (1961). “The student body carried a piano in with it… and poked fun in topical verses at the personal characteristics of the chancellor (Sir robert Stout), the chairman (Sir Maurice o’rorke), the professors, and the individual graduates (20 to 30 in number)…

“The chancellor was utterly impatient of student humour; and after a really riotous finish in 1912, washed his hands of AUc completely by cancelling any further public conferring of degrees. This was answered in 1913 by a student carnival in the Town Hall in honour of the graduates. It was a very witty extravaganza

called ‘The Legend of Kapingara and the ngati Pois’. one Papi Waipiro has stolen the maiden Kapingara from orakei Pa. The ngati Pois track him down, and sentence him to wed Pankahura (leader of the Mäori suffragettes), who quickly makes him toe the line. … I had a solo part and helped train the chorus.”

From university, Ken Dellow went on to have a successful career as a Latin teacher at Auckland Boys Grammar and then as a teacher and headmaster of Takapuna Grammar from 1935 -1953.

Ken’s two children (the great grandchildren of Thomas Buddle) followed in their father’s footsteps by studying at Auckland University college.

In 1948 ronald Dellow graduated with a Bachelor of Music and went on to spend most of his distinguished musical career at the University, first as a tutor and then Senior Lecturer with the centre for continuing Education.

ronald’s younger sister Vivienne enrolled at the University in 1944 and graduated with a BA 1947, MA 1949, PhD Botany 1955. She has since become a world authority on micro algae, publishing some 60 papers on the world’s smallest plants and penning the book Micro algae – Microscopic Marvels which encapsulates her life’s work. Vivienne was awarded an MnZM for her services to new Zealand botany and is a member of the University’s Federation of Graduate Women. She has been married to two Auckland graduates: Dr richard Morrison cassie (BSc 1941, DSc 1964) and, after Dr cassie’s untimely death in 1971, robert cecil cooper (Bcom 1942, BA 1950, MA Botany 1951).

Vivienne’s daughter (the great, great granddaughter of Thomas Buddle) is also an alumna of the University. rachel cassie graduated with a MBchB in 1985 and is a practising independent midwife in Hamilton.

not surprisingly in light of the family history, rachel’s eldest son Matthew Lillis is in his final year at Hamilton Boys High School and is considering enrolling at The University of Auckland’s Engineering School in 2009 to become a civil engineer.

Four generations and counting

Alumni ties

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From top to bottom: rev. Thomas Buddle (1812 -1883), Ken Dellow (1890 -1971), rachel cassie and her son Matthew Lillis.


“If my great uncles hadn’t been lawyers, I don’t know if my father would’ve become one, and if my father wasn’t a lawyer, I definitely wouldn’t have become one, and then I think Andelka, my daughter, did Law because both her parents had Law degrees.”

Michelle chignell (LLB 1980) smiles as she tells Ingenio the story of how there came to be four generations of lawyers in her family.

“I always understood that my great uncles Victor and Justice went to Auckland University college before being admitted to the bar,” she muses as we trawl through University records. These reveal only that in 1919 Michelle’s great uncle Victor Grahame attended the college studying applied maths and chemistry; in 1921 he returned and took a range of subjects including hydraulics, calculus, civil engineering and building construction.

“Victor really wanted to do Engineering but his older brother Justice lost his leg in a car accident,” explains Michelle. “Victor’s mother insisted he give up Engineering and study Law so he could help his brother to practise Law.”

However, the two Grahame brothers appear to have become solicitors by being articled clerks rather than gaining a University Law degree. They practised as Grahame & Grahame in the Hellaby Building in Queen Street and were admitted to the bar in the 1920s (Justice in 1924 and Victor in1927), their career paths setting a precedent for future generations.

When the Grahame brothers’ nephew Felix John chignell (Michelle’s father) returned from serving in the new Zealand Fleet Air Arm during the Second World War, they persuaded him to study Law at Auckland University college. Felix (known as Jack) graduated with an LLB in 1953.

“For a while Dad worked for other law firms then for his uncles, but eventually he set up as the first law practitioner – ‘F. J. chignell Barrister and Solicitor’ – in Panmure,” explains Michelle.

When she was deciding on a career she remembers her father urging her to do “something practical”.

“He said ‘don’t do Law to please me but do something you can make a living out of ’.” Michelle took that advice and pursued a career that has included litigation, general practice running her father’s Panmure office after he died in 1987, working for Phonographic Performances [the copyright licensing arm of the recording industry] and her current role as new Zealand legal counsel for Veda Advantage – an Australasian business information provider.

Law has seeped into the next generation of Michelle’s family. Last year her daughter Andelka Vuletic graduated from the University with a BA/LLB and this May receives her BA (Hons).

“I did Law and a BA and from a very early age and I always expected to go to university,” says Andelka. “now I like it so much I’ve decided to become an academic; I don’t want to practise law.”

Andelka is currently tutoring at the Law School and studying for her masters in Law. She is interested in legal history and her masters topic focuses on outbreaks of the Black Death and its impact on the development of labour and land law. She is also enrolled in “comparative indigenous people and the law” – an innovative paper which is taught via video conferencing with students in canada, oklahoma and Australia.

graduate numbers Accurate records of University of Auckland alumni date back only as far as 1937. The following table illustrates the steady, and latterly dramatic, rise in numbers of alumni since then.

numbers of graduates from 1937

year graduates1937 1431947 2691957 3261967 9211977 2,1501987 2,8031997 6,3132007 8,728

A history of Law

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Above from left: Victor Grahame (1902 - early 1960s), Michelle chignell, Andelka Vuletic.

10 | The University of Auckland

When ron Whittome enrolled for a Bcom at Auckland University college in the 1930s he was the first member of his immediate family to embark on tertiary education.

His father, by then deceased, had been a goldminer in the Karangahake Gorge on the coromandel, and ron, the youngest of four boys, was living at home with his mother in onehunga.

“The family would’ve really stretched themselves to get him [ron] to university,” says ron’s son, alumnus Andrew Whittome. “He wanted to get into medicine but there just wasn’t enough money. He was working as an accountant then and would’ve probably done a lot of his study at night school.”

Graduating with a Bcom in 1940, ron Whittome went on to have a highly successful

career: he worked for State Advances and then Milne & choyce as the chief accountant, transferring to UEB Industries in 1965 and retiring in 1980 as UEB’s chief accountant/controller. He was prominent in the cost Accounting Association and new Zealand computer Association and is said to have been responsible for installing the first IBM 360 computer for UEB Industries.

As his fortunes rose, ron moved his family to Takapuna and instilled in his three children the importance of a university education. As a result his two daughters became doctors and Andrew graduated from Auckland with a BSc in Geology in 1972 and BE in 1975.

now based in california as director of project development for calpine – one of the US’s leading geothermal power producers

– Andrew has had an international career in the geothermal business, based principally in the US, the Philippines and Indonesia.

Like his father and grandfather, Michael Whittome (Andrew’s eldest son) chose to study at The University of Auckland and graduated with a BE in Mechanical Engineering last year.

He never knew his paternal grandfather who died in 1982, the year before he was born. “But I was always aware that my grandfather had gone to university and it was something I always knew I wanted to do too,” he says.

now working for consulting engineering firm connell Wagner, Michael is involved in a project based in Indonesia, which, to his amusement, is one of his father’s old stomping grounds.

Like father, like son, like grandson


From left to right: ron Whittome (1917 -1982),

Michael Whittome (left) and Andrew Whittome.

Ingenio Autumn 2008 | 11

When Lina Samu (BA 1993, MA Hons 1995) was growing up in Mangere East in the 70s and 80s her Samoan-born father pinned a map of the world on the living room wall.

“He put it up when were very small so that we would know the world was bigger than our circumstances here in Mangere,” she says.

Lina’s parents, Leatufale Lila and Tuiloma Molipopo Samu arrived in new Zealand from Samoa in their early twenties and spent their lives working to get their children into tertiary education.

“My mother worked at the Auckland Hospital Board laundry for more than 30 years and Dad worked on assembly lines for most of his life – the vinegar factory in Ponsonby, Fletchers – and driving buses and taxis,” says Lina. “They were very strong union people and they realised that you could only move up in this country if you had higher education and could become like their bosses. They were lifelong members of the Service and Food Workers Union.”

As a result of Leatufale and Molipopo’s efforts, four of the six Samu children went on from school to get university degrees. Two graduated from Auckland: Lina, who got her MA Hons in Mäori Studies in 1995 and is this year returning to the University to do a PhD (also in Mäori Studies), and her brother

nathan BA (1987), who is now the Director of Sport at Avondale college.

”Graduation is a big day in our family,” says Lina. “It is bigger than a birthday celebration. The whole family has a day off work and school.

“I remember when I graduated with my MA, my parents were so proud and afterwards they put on a special party for me.

“Going to university was a very rare thing in this community,” she adds. “When we were growing up people went into trades and factory work as soon as they turned 15. I can’t think of another family who sent kids to tertiary education.”

Although Leatufale Lila and Tuiloma Molipopo have since died, their legacy continues. Their eldest grandchild, Joshua Bradley (BSc 2002, MSc (Hons) 2004) is in his fourth year of a medical degree while Anita Samu completed a Bcom/BSc conjoint in 2005. Two of the younger Samu grandchildren are also studying at the University: nikki plans to be a physical education teacher, while Leone is in her third year of a BA majoring in Art History.

“our parents’ driving goal was to get us into higher education,” reflects Lina. “now a lot of Pacific and Mäori are going to university – it’s really exciting.”

A world bigger than Mangere

Above from left: Leone, nikki, Anita and Lina Samu outside the University’s Fale Pasifika. Above right: Molipopo Samu (1933 -2000), Leatufale Samu (1933 -2003).

numbers of Pacific island and Mäori graduates at The University of Auckland year Pacific island Mäori 1992 126 1841997 272 353 2002 358 359 2007 491 525



University life as it used to be To mark the University’s 125th Jubilee, Auckland University Press has produced a richly illustrated book,

The University of Auckland: The First 125 years, compiled and written by alumnus nicholas reid.

The following is an extract from nicholas’s opening essay (pages 5-8).

What were academic and student lives like in the decades before the Second World War?

Auckland University college was a teaching institution. It was not research-driven. The small library took in few modern specialist journals. Professors and lecturers passed on a traditional undergraduate education and some did not keep up with the latest developments in their own specialisms. There was no system of sabbatical or study leave until a government commission took a critical look at tertiary education in 1925 and overhauled the way bachelors degrees were awarded. There was a tendency for senior staff to be recruited from

Britain, most commonly from oxbridge or Edinburgh. only by the late 1920s and early 1930s were new Zealand graduates awarded teaching posts, most of them having achieved their postgraduate qualifications abroad. The college was dominated by the three core faculties of Arts, Science and commerce. Elementary law was taught and a chair in Law given to ronald Algie in 1920. But at that stage there was no comprehensive Law School at Auckland or anywhere else in the country.

The great majority of students were part-time. In 1930, only 175 students were full-time. Hence most lectures were held in the

Close affinity with UniversityA strong University pedigree made nicholas reid an admirable choice to write The University of Auckland: The First 125 Years.

Both his parents were students at Auckland University college in the 1930s. His late father, John cowie reid, served as president of the Students’ Association and became a renowned professor of English at his alma mater.

nicholas holds four degrees from Auckland – BA 1973, MA 1975, MTheol 2000 and a PhD 2004 in history – and has tutored in the History Department. Four of his children are alumni.

His credentials as an historian and biographer are impressive – and growing. His book A Decade of New Zealand Film appeared in 1985 and he has produced two other books based on his Theology and doctoral theses: a history of the catholic press in the Auckland Diocese and a highly regarded biography of Archbishop James Liston. His life of cardinal reginald Delargey (who succeeded Liston) is due out later this year.

late afternoon or evening to accommodate the working day of trainee teachers, law students acting as law clerks and young business people taking commercial papers. The University college was sometimes dismissed as a glorified “night school”.

Unlike some British universities, Auckland never went through the folly of barring women from higher education. From its foundation, women made up a high proportion of the student roll and at the opening ceremony in 1883 the Governor, Sir William Jervois, stressed the democratic nature of the institution and the fact that it was open to all classes and to both men and women. By 1890 there were more women enrolled than men. Yet social convention meant that there were no women on the teaching staff until 1924 when Dora Miller, an assistant lecturer in French, was appointed.

In retrospect, the early University college is often seen as tightly controlled and conformist. It was a small community, modelled on British ideas of desirable higher education, with an overwhelmingly Päkehä and middle-class intake of students. one common room for men and one for “ladies”, adjacent to Lippincott’s Arts building, served the needs of the whole student body. There was the very occasional public scandal, as when the history professor, J.P. Grossmann, defrauded the philosophy professor, William Anderson, out of thousands of pounds. But in the main the interwar period was characterised by the formality of the college President, former politician Sir George Fowlds, and the strictness of the registrar, rocke o’Shea.

Was conformity in fact pushed too far? In the Depression years, the college council felt much suspicion of political radicals of the left and the right. The philosophy lecturer, r. P. (“Dickie”) Anschutz, was reprimanded in 1932 for writing the enthusiastic preface to a propaganda pamphlet extolling the virtues of Stalin’s Soviet Union. Temporary history lecturer J.c. Beaglehole failed to get a permanent appointment, and made his career elsewhere, after writing letters to the press about free speech. These events have sometimes been interpreted as grave matters affecting academic freedom and are the

you can order The University of Auckland: The First 125 Years either: – online at www.auckland.ac.nz/aup – By email [email protected] – By telephone 64 9 373 7528.

remember all alumni receive a special 15 percent discount on AUP books purchased via the order form on the Alumni relations website: www.alumni.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/for/alumni/news/aup-discount.cfm

harshest things that ever happened in the college concerning staff members’ right to express opinions.

Student life had a serious side and a silly side. To look after students’ interests, a Students’ Association had been founded in 1891. Membership became compulsory in 1921, and remained so until 1999. There were always student politicians to act as the Association’s officers and sportspeople to represent the University in national tournaments. In 1905, Auckland students founded a literary journal, Kiwi, which managed to survive in various forms until the 1960s. The student newspaper, Craccum, which has gone through periods of seriousness and frivolity, was founded in

1928. (Its name is an anagram of Auckland University college Men’s common room committee.) In the 1930s, there was also the very short-lived literary magazine Phoenix (four issues only), which later earned a rather inflated reputation as the beginning of a genuinely national literature.

Less seriously, and deriving from British student “rag weeks”, there were traditions of boisterous student

horseplay and foolery around the time of the annual graduation ceremony. often banned by the college authorities, a students’ capping procession, or “procesh”, was made up of satirical floats ridiculing college or national public figures. Its appearance could delight or enrage the city community, depending on taste. The yearly capping stunts, magazine and revue had a similar effect. Social clubs of a very masculine kind, such as the “Hongi” club, promoted drinking competitions and elaborate practical jokes.

one tale of the interwar college, however, deserves to be remembered as a classic of tenacity. Because a school of engineering existed in christchurch, government and the University of new Zealand refused to allow engineering to be taught at Auckland. But, in 1905, Auckland opened its School of Mining and gradually, by progressively widening its curriculum, managed to turn it into a Department of Engineering by 1924 and then

a School of Engineering by 1927. Even so, Auckland was not permitted to teach the full Bachelor of Engineering degree until 1939. Auckland’s engineers suffered from limited resources. For years they were housed in an unsightly jumble of old tin sheds, squeezed behind the old barracks wall and described by one engineering professor as “the outstanding disgrace to the University of new Zealand”. The School was almost shut down by economic cutbacks in 1935. That it kept going was largely thanks to an engineering professor, Sydney Ernest Lamb, whose skill in manoeuvre led University historian Keith Sinclair to call him “the most successful academic politician of his day”.

“often banned by the college authorities, a students’ capping procession, or “procesh”, was made up of satirical floats ridiculing college or national public figures.”

Ingenio Autumn 2008 | 1�

1� | The University of Auckland

From the 1970sThe Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic), Professor raewyn Dalziel, writes about the changes she has

witnessed during 36 years at the University. raewyn is a noted new Zealand historian and the wife of

the late Sir Keith Sinclair who wrote A History of The University of Auckland 1883 -1983 to honour the

University’s centenary.

I arrived at the University early in 1972 from London, where I had been on a post-doctoral fellowship, to take up a lectureship in the Department of History housed in Wynyard Street. The University had reached 10,000 students, regarded as its limit, and about 700 staff. It was confined to the city campus and Grafton, where the Medical School had opened a few years previously. The city campus had been much built over in the 1960s: the Engineering School had come back to the city; a new Library Building had been constructed and housed both the Library and the School of Law; the Student Union and the Science Buildings were complete.

The staff still talked about the take-off in student numbers that had occurred from about 1962, remembering students sitting in the aisles of lecture theatres as the increased roll took an unprepared University by surprise. Degrees were organised into “units” – nine in the BA and eight in the BSc – and the year was organised into three terms. There were hardly any doctoral students and the masters degree was seen as the premier degree in most departments. Senate and council met in a well designed room in the east end of what was known as the registry Building. colin Maiden had been in the role of Vice-chancellor for one year and a committee on university government had recently reorganised the University’s committee structure, introduced rotating heads of departments and abolished the Faculty of Education.

The 1970s saw a further increase in student numbers to more than 12,000 and the notion of a restriction to 10,000 was abandoned. There was a mini-building boom – the Maidment Theatre, named after the first Vice-chancellor, the recreation centre, the Human Sciences Building, and the computer centre were all constructed in the 1970s – and a revolution in degree structures as we moved to smaller “papers” rather than the large “units”.

Although there was growth in the 70s, there was also a feeling that things were closing in. Inflation was high and the financial

position of universities was precarious. Students paid minimal fees and Government grants came through the University Grants committee in a somewhat uncertain way. Although we had a vague idea that grants were related to student numbers, it was by no means clear how the grant was calculated.

Inside the University, things seemed to be managed by the Vice-chancellor’s famous graph – a plotting of staff:student ratios that determined everything from whether staff were replaced when they resigned or retired to departmental operating grants (a sum of money in the case of the History Department amounting to a few hundred dollars). Academic staff salaries were a major issue and the union, then the Association of University Teachers, waged mighty battles with Government for salary increases.

The 1970s saw the end of one protesting generation. Tim Shadbolt had left the University by the time I arrived and the Vietnam protests were soon over. But the feminist movement was thriving on campus and one of the earliest visitors I recall was Germaine Greer who notoriously repeated Tim’s “bullshit” in public and an arrest warrant was issued against her. Almost 30 years later when she was to return to Auckland to speak at a University occasion, I was asked to find out whether the arrest warrant was still active!

Then in 1981 the Springbok Tour revitalised the protest movement. Although views on the tour within the University were possibly as mixed as anywhere, University staff and students were prominent in the Friday night marches up Queen Street and in protests on the day of matches. Well-known academics were among those who invaded the rugby ground at Hamilton, causing the game to be called off. Students turned up in class with broken arms and other injuries incurred while protesting and a spell in the cells became a common excuse for late assignments.

The University celebrated its centennial



in 1983 in style but was soon to be plunged into the biggest shake-up new Zealand universities have ever experienced. changes in tertiary education policy from 1984 made it seem as if the University was in a constant state of review, submissions, and reform. These changes were finally enacted in the Education Act 1989, which importantly re-affirmed academic freedom and institutional autonomy, and set the stage for the major developments of the 1990s.

The Act made the Vice-chancellor the employer of all staff and thus radically changed both his role and that of the University council. The University Grants committee, which had been a buffer between the Government and the universities, was abolished and the universities entered into a new relationship with Government and the Ministry of Education. new funding regimes were put in place and then tinkered with every few years. Universities were allowed to charge student tuition fees and there emerged the notion that the Government would meet about three quarters of tuition costs and students the remaining quarter. This changed the relationship between universities and their students, especially around fee-setting time. The protests were now directed at the University, students occupying the registry one year and the clockTower another year.

Although the University Grants committee was much lamented by some, its demise made universities take responsibility for their own direction and future. our University produced its first formal mission statement and strategic plan in 1995 - 96. Planning became a self-conscious activity and budgets a constant reminder of a new accountability. A new financial system, inappropriately called Millennium, delivered the first accurate financial information to departments and moved some of us into the age of electronic accounting. We joined Universitas 21 and benchmarking, staff appraisal, and student evaluations of courses and teaching came on the scene. Deans stopped being elected and became appointed as “executive deans” which meant that they were expected to act rather than preside benignly over faculty meetings.

The Government’s policy was to promote access and participation in tertiary education and, with a still limited number of tertiary education institutions, most students saw a university as the place to attend. The domestic student population soared and the Tamaki campus was built, initially to take the burgeoning numbers of business students.

Towards the end of the 1990s, a new growth spurt came from a wave of international undergraduate students finding their way to new Zealand.

It has never seemed to me that the University is an ivory tower – how could it be when it has so many students and staff,

covers so many diverse fields of work, and runs such a major operation? But if there were a case for the ivory tower in the 1970s, there no longer was by the 1990s. The changes of the 1990s forced the University to reconsider its direction, its structure and organisation, its academic activities especially

its contribution to national and international research programmes and its international role. Although it could see where it needed to go, it was difficult to realise this new future in a decade where funding failed to keep pace with student growth and stretched resources led to staff redundancies and cessation of the building programme.

Since 1999 the University has been engaged in a process of internal change to enable it to become the institution that it had glimpsed in the 1990s. Hugely expanded and highly successful research activity, further restructuring of qualifications, some magnificent new buildings, sophisticated financial planning and advanced teaching and learning technologies, growth in postgraduate programmes and a vigorous international strategy along with developing relationships with the local communities, have transformed the University as an institution.

nevertheless, universities value tradition, stability, ritual and ceremony at the same time as they show their ability to re-invent themselves in response to changing contexts and environments. The University I joined in 1972 is still recognisable – my old department still resides in Wynyard Street.

“changes in tertiary education policy from 1984 made it seem as if the University was in a constant state of review, submissions, and reform.”



A fitting celebration: the 2008 Distinguished Alumni Awards who could have predicted in 1883 that a gathering of the University’s alumni 125 years later would be a showcase of some of the most accomplished and influential new Zealanders?

More than 600 people turned out for the 2008 Distinguished Alumni Awards (DAA) Dinner held in the grounds of old Government House on 7 March, the largest such event on record and a fitting celebration in the University’s 125th Jubilee year.

It was an event to honour the achievements of those outstanding alumni selected as recipients of the 2008 awards. It was also a time to take pride in the University, to reflect on how far it has come since 1883 and to consider where its strengths will take us in the future.

Dark clouds hung overhead as the black-tie event began with drinks on the lawn but never threatened the festive ambience of the occasion. Award recipients arrived with friends and whanau – some from overseas – and VIPs including the Prime Minister were a reminder of the great heights that some of our alumni reach. The literati and the glitterati were there, so too the emeritocracy, a term coined at the 2007 Golden Graduates Luncheon to denote a gathering of emeritus professors.

The Alumni Marquee looked resplendent

and grander than ever with an additional 108 square metres to accommodate the high demand for tickets. The usual14-peak venue this year billowed to a 16-peak venue, taking seven days to erect.

In her opening address, the rt Hon Helen clark recalled the profound impact her time studying at the University had on her career path, a sentiment reiterated numerous times throughout the evening by the recipients of the awards.

The Vice-chancellor, Professor Stuart Mccutcheon, took the audience through a journey from the days when the idea of a University college was first proposed – and thrown out of the Legislative council initially – to the impressive credentials we can be proud to claim as ours today. He pointed out that the future was not some place we were going to but one we were creating, first in the mind and the will, next in activity.

“The University will be the natural home for outstanding students,” he said. “It will have many professors of international eminence, including the first new Zealander to have won the nobel Prize without having spent the preceding 30 years overseas.”

The five key areas of strength the University will build on in the future were outlined by

guest speaker and Microsoft corporation chief Financial officer chris Liddell, himself a Distinguished Alumnus (see page 19).

Alumni orator, Distinguished Professor Brian Boyd provided a highly entertaining commentary as Dame catherine Tizard, Patron of The University of Auckland Society, and Judge David Abbott, President of the Society, presented awards to DAA recipients Sir ron carter, Emeritus Professor carrick chambers, Dr James church, the Hon Justice Lowell Goddard, Emeritus Professor c.K. Stead, Lynette Stewart and John chen (see DAA recipients’ profiles on pages 17 -18).

A delectable three-course dinner was accompanied by wines produced by alumni vintners and the University’s Wine Science programme, concluding to the sounds of an Auckland Philharmonia orchestra string quartet. The Master of ceremonies, Director of External relations John Taylor, and the Alumni Team ensured that the evening flowed without a hitch.

Guests departed with a commemorative gift to mark the University’s 125th Jubilee – a limited edition interpretation of Lippincott’s iconic clockTower designed by ceramic artist Bob Steiner.

helen Borne


our 2008 Distinguished AlumniSir ron CArTEr (BE 1957, ME 1958, honD 2001)

Sir ron carter is a Distinguished Fellow and former President of the Institution of Professional Engineers new Zealand. He was knighted in 1998 for services to business and engineering.

In accepting his award at the DAA Dinner Sir ron paid tribute to the partnerships he has had throughout his life and to the institution that gave him a “wonderful” education. He said as an engineer he considered himself part of a machine with many parts: “There are no projects that we do that are not the product of many people.”

In 1968 Sir ron was one of four founding partners of consulting firm Beca carter Hollings & Ferner. He played a major role in the development of the Beca Group, which has grown into new Zealand’s largest privately-owned engineering consultancy, and in the development of much of the company’s overseas business. He was appointed Managing Director of Beca carter Hollings & Ferner Ltd in 1986 and chairman of the Beca Group Ltd in 1995.

He has held many directorships and is currently on the Board of rugby 2011 Ltd. He is chairman of the committee for Auckland, a Trustee of the Sir Peter Blake Trust and chair of the Trust’s Leadership Awards selection panel.

A strong supporter of the University, Sir ron was instrumental in establishing the Beca Engineering Scholarships in 1990 and the Beca Engineering in Society Scholarships in 1998.

JUSTiCE LowELL goDDArD (LLB 1975)

The Hon Justice Lowell Goddard is a highly respected member of the new Zealand judiciary who has been at the forefront of criminal law and procedure. She is the first woman to hold the position of Independent Police conduct Authority.

In her acceptance speech Justice Lowell said she had many and varied memories of the University’s School of Law. “My presence here tonight is in no small part due to the perseverance and the skill of those legal academics for whom teaching was a true vocation.”

After Justice Goddard graduated she practised as a barrister sole from an early stage of her career. In 1988, she was one of the first two women to be appointed Queen’s counsel along with Dame Sian Elias, also a distinguished University of Auckland alumna.

In 1992 she became Deputy Solicitor-General at the crown Law office and was responsible for oversight of all indictable prosecutions and criminal appeals in the court of Appeal and the Privy council. She was appointed a judge of the High court in 1995. of ngati Te Upokoiri, ngati Kahungungu and Tuhoi iwi, she was the first Māori woman to be appointed to this position.

In 2007 she took up the role of Independent Police conduct Authority, an appointment made by the Governor-General.

JAMES ChUrCh (BSC 1971, MBChB 1974, MMEDSC 1976)

Dr James church is an outstanding colorectal surgeon who holds a personal chair in colorectal Surgery at the prestigious cleveland clinic in ohio. He was a member of the first graduating class at the University’s School of Medicine in 1974.

A proud alumnus, James shared with guests the sense of responsibility he experiences in his work having the life and welfare of patients in his hands. He quipped that his occupation was also fun: “In what other profession could you come home after the day and say, ‘I’ve been looking up old friends’?”

After completing his primary medical degree and specialist surgical training in Auckland, James moved to the US where he built his professional practice at cleveland. He is currently Vice chairman at the colorectal Surgery Department.

Although mainly a practising surgeon, he has contributed enormously to the field of colorectal surgery research, having published more than 200 peer-reviewed articles, two books and many chapters. His contributions have been both to academic coloproctology and patient care, while his input to the surgical field has seen significant improvements in the care of patients with inflammatory bowel disease.

James has been named one of the “Top Doctors in America” consecutively for the last six years. He founded the collaborative Group of the Americas for Inherited colorectal cancer and is a Fellow of the American college of Surgeons, the American Society of colorectal Surgeons and the American college of Gastroenterology.



EMEriTUS ProFESSor CArriCK ChAMBErS (BSC 1953, MSC 1955)

Emeritus Professor carrick chambers is an eminent botanist whose distinguished career began at Auckland University college. He was Professor of Botany at the University of Melbourne for 20 years and Director of the royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, for 10 years.

At the DAA Dinner, carrick recalled early influences on his interest in botany including the “inspirational” teaching of renowned women’s issues campaigner Dame Miriam Dell, who was his botany teacher in his sixth form year, and the staff at the Auckland War Museum “who would always answer a schoolboy’s questions”.

At Auckland, carrick was awarded MSc with first class honours for his studies on the fern genus Blechnum, in which he maintains an active interest. Blechnum chambersii was named in his honour.

He spent a year lecturing at Auckland in ecology, four years at University of Sydney and a year at cambridge, and was then successively a lecturer, senior lecturer and professor at the Botany School of the University of Melbourne from 1961 -1986.

Under carrick’s directorship (1986 - 1996) the royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney and the national Herbarium of nSW flourished. The Herb Garden, rose Garden and Fernery all opened during his tenure.

LynETTE STEwArT (grADDiPBUS 2000, MMgT 2006)

Lynette Stewart is a distinguished Māori leader and businesswoman. She has a proven track record in innovative leadership and is recognised within the health sector for her outstanding contribution to the health and well-being of the people of Te Tai Tokerau.

Lynette has been the chairperson for the northland District Health Board for six years and is cEo of Te Tai Tokerau MAPo (Māori Purchasing organisation). She is recognised as an inspirational leader and her involvement in the development and implementation of community health initiatives has been instrumental in reducing inequalities in Māori health and improving disability support services.

At the DAA Dinner, Lynette spoke about the value of studying later in life (she is currently working towards her PhD). “It’s never too late. If you have a determination and a will to get there, then you can.”

The University of Auckland Business School recognised her achievements in 2003 by awarding her the inaugural Mira Szászy Māori Business Leaders Award and in 2006 she was awarded the companion of the new Zealand order of Merit (cnZM).

EMEriTUS ProFESSor C.K. STEAD (BA 1954, MA 1955, DLiTT 1982)

c. K. (Karl) Stead is a novelist, literary critic, poet, essayist and Emeritus Professor of English at The University of Auckland. He has been one of new Zealand’s leading literary figures for almost half a century.

on receiving his DAA Award, he reflected on the fact that he remembered very clearly getting off the train at Wellesley Street 57 years ago and walking up Princes Street to enrol for his studies, with no idea that he might go on to have an enduring connection with the University.

After completing his BA and MA at Auckland, he lectured for two years in Australia and completed his PhD in Bristol. He returned to Auckland to take up a lectureship in 1960. By 1968 he was Professor of English, a position he held until taking early retirement in 1987.

Although a distinguished academic, Karl has always thought of himself primarily as a “new Zealand writer”. His publications include 13 books of fiction, 14 of poetry and six of criticism, as well as six volumes as editor. His most recent is a collection of essays, Book Self (2008). He has received many awards and honours, including the new Zealand Book Award for fiction (twice) and poetry. He was elected Fellow of the royal Society of Literature in 1995 and in 2007 was admitted to the order of new Zealand.

YOUNG ALUMNUS OF THE YEAR John ChEn (BMUS 2005, MMUS (honS) 2005)

This year’s Young Alumnus of the Year is John chen who, in 2004, at the age of 18, not only received his Master of Music degree from The University of Auckland but also became the youngest winner of the Sydney International Piano competition. His outstanding abilities place him at the forefront of new Zealand musicians of his generation.

currently based in Los Angeles, John is studying at the colburn School of Performing Arts. commitments at the rubenstein International Piano competition in Tel Aviv meant that he was unable to attend the DAA Dinner but he will receive his award at an alumni reception later in the year.

John began his piano studies at the age of three, won his first piano competition at the age of nine and made his official orchestral debut aged 15, performing Prokofiev’s Piano concerto no. 3 with the new Zealand Symphony orchestra. He studied with prominent new Zealand teacher rae de Lisle for 11 years, gaining his masters degree under her tutelage.

Although John has a particular passion for 20th century French music, he is also deeply committed to new Zealand music and has given the world premieres of works by several leading new Zealand composers.

The law of big numbers – or perhaps we could call it “Thermodynamics for Dummies” – might seem an unlikely topic for a guest speaker at the DAA Dinner but Distinguished Alumnus Chris Liddell (BE 1979) drew on knowledge gained from his Engineering studies to provide some fascinating food for thought on how the University can prosper in the next 125 years.

Defining the future

Best known as the chief Financial officer of Microsoft corporation, chris was an engineering student during the University’s 93rd to 95th years. Among other things, he studied the second law of thermodynamics which, in simple terms, states that equilibrium is the end state in the evolution of closed systems, being the point at which the system has exhausted all capacity for change.

Speaking to more than 600 at the DAA dinner, chris proposed that the challenge for the University – and all companies and large organisations – was to avoid being subject to the second law of thermodynamics and, in particular, to avoid becoming an insular closed system without the capacity for change.

In looking back the University had done very well so far in beating the law of big numbers: 125 years ago 93 students were offered three degree courses; 30 years ago 10,000 students were offered 25 degree courses; in 2008 nearly 40,000 students are offered 93 degrees, 54 diplomas and 20 certificate courses.

Looking forward, though, the impact of the University and its contribution to new Zealand society would determine its success. With that in mind, it had identified five key areas of societal need where it could take a leadership role. These are:

the health of our nation

the development of our children

the growth of the economy

the future of our cities

the expression of who we are.

“To truly make a difference in these areas is an ambitious task for any institution and requires an increasingly open system with a substantial influx of external energy,” he said.

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He asked guests to think about the future of the University in the context of their own personal growth, both contributing to and benefiting from an alignment with one of the University’s five key areas.

He stressed that wealth was not the only powerful contributor. “The real impact comes with the combination of economic and personal contribution, not just money but time and effort.”

He cited as an obvious example Bill Gates who is giving up full-time work at Microsoft in June to concentrate on his foundation.

“In doing so he is looking to apply the same skills and disciplines that he learnt in the business world to the needs of society. At the end of his life he may well be better remembered for the impact he had through his foundation than he did in creating Microsoft.”

In new Zealand, a prime example was Sir Edmund Hillary, who had devoted the latter part of his life to making the world a better place.

chris quoted last year’s nobel Peace Prize winner Professor Mahamed Yunus: “People are not one-dimensional profit maximisers, as imagined by classical economists. In the real world people are multi-dimensional. People have two, three or many interests and goals... which can be divided into two broad categories – profit and social benefit... [They] create rich and varied lives for themselves by participating in both and in varying proportions, depending on the goals and objectives they most value at any point in time.”

“The people in this room have the power to help define the future of our University,” chris concluded “and, in doing so, help it outrun the law of big numbers as it embarks on another 125 years.”

helen Borne

PhiLAnThroPy

new tax lawsChanges to new Zealand’s tax rules governing charitable giving came into effect last month, removing impediments to giving and laying the foundation for a stronger culture of charitable giving.

From 1 April 2008 the government removed:

the $1,890 rebate threshold applying to cash donations to charities made by individualsthe five percent limit on deductions that companies can claim for cash donations to charitiesthe restriction on unlisted companies with five or fewer shareholders claiming deductions for donations.

Under the new rules:individual donors can claim a 33.3 percent tax rebate on all donations up to their annual net incomecompanies (including unlisted companies with five or fewer shareholders) and Māori authorities can claim a tax deduction for donations up to their annual net income.

For example: if a gift of $3,000 is made to The

University of Auckland from a donor’s net income, it costs the donor only $2,000 once the $1,000 rebate is taken into consideration.

The removal of the rebate cap brings new Zealand into line with the treatment of donations in other oECD countries such as Australia and Britain.

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oPinion

refocusing multiversities The year 2008, early in a new millennium, is not only the 125th birthday of The University of Auckland. it is a particularly auspicious year. not so long ago Auckland was a university college within the imperial solar system of universities in Britain. By any historical measure, the University has rapidly moved to independent status. But its campuses are on the edge of yet another audacious transformation as they strive to enter a global community of elite research-led universities.

The research university is a “multiversity”, a neologism coined some 40 years ago to describe the many activities, disciplines, sub-disciplines, programmes and schools congregated within a single institution. The multiversity is an outgrowth of the German research revolution of the 19th century. Until that point, universities were primarily undergraduate teaching institutions with schools for professional training.

The research university came to maturity in the 20th century after two world wars as the linchpin of advanced industrial economies. The advent of computer technology, sensational advances in the medical and biological sciences and the invention of new financial and managerial tools, all of which are particularly suited to university activity, have created a new phase and immeasurably strengthened applied missions. The present research university is far less academically exclusive than its predecessors. It is also a hybrid, combining private and public features.

At this exact moment discussion about how to define and structure a “world-class university” is a hot-button topic everywhere, and new Zealand’s eight universities are caught up in the fervour. Global competition for student and academic talent requires high standards of excellence which cannot be achieved without substantial resources. Governments therefore encourage universities to diversify their income streams through market activity, the results intended to benefit both universities and society as a whole.

The new world in which The University of Auckland finds itself is exciting but not without risks and compromises already evident. one is a maldistribution of rewards, certain academic fields being favoured over

others. A second is a subtle undermining of the undergraduate mission as postgraduate research is emphasised. A third is that research is separated from undergraduate teaching, creating a two-tier system of academic appointments with second-class citizens. A fourth is that the drive to attract measurable talent will make the multiversity inaccessible to students without competitive records (very controversial). A fifth difficulty is that universities may recruit leaders from sources unfamiliar with university traditions of shared decision-making. And a sixth concern is that heavy concentration on a select number of world-class universities will lead to a neglect of the other higher education institutions also required by a modern society. They perform vital educational functions but also make possible the very existence and legitimacy of the global multiversity.

A final issue is ironic. While governments are eager to form and encourage the emergence of world-class universities, they are also nervous about allowing them full scope in pursuing global ambitions. Accordingly, politicians and ministries almost everywhere, if not to the same degree, are adopting new administrative policies designed to “steer” or “guide” the multiversity. Typically, these result in onerous measures of audit, assessment and accountability that tend to be at odds

with established university conventions of evaluation, such as peer review.

one important assignment for the multiversity is to draw attention to the highest international standards of academic quality. A democratic society, where voters require so much knowledge and critical understanding, particularly requires centres of excellence to set examples. Until some 50 years ago, few attended universities. no longer. But the extraordinary and necessary expansion of educational opportunity has also produced uneven academic achievement. In addition, one school of critics argues that the internet and mass media are promoting cultural and intellectual mediocrity. To combat this vexing development, the fragmented multiversity will have to regain some measure of internal coherence by recalling ancient traditions of shared intellectual values. Without such values, the university, despite its special and unique history, is just another of modern society’s busy, money-minded corporations in search of a brand.Professor Sheldon rothblatt, from the University of California, Berkley, is a renowned historian of British, European and university history. in March he visited The University of Auckland to give three Sir Douglas robb lectures expanding on issues raised in this column.

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Making a differencengā Pae o te Māramatanga – a centre for research excellence based at the University – is having

a positive impact on the lives of Mäori and their communities. Judy wilford profiles its work.

nestled among trees overlooking the water at Waimango Papakainga on the Firth of Thames is a small structure recently completed by the Te Whānau A Haunui people who own the land.

Another similar free-standing room looks equally at home in the urban setting of Te Kura Takawaenga o Piripono, a Māori language immersion school in otara, South Auckland.

Both of these structures are built of an innovative material which combines earth and cement reinforced with a Te Arawa flax fibre; this adds strength and ductility, allowing for the walls to be half as thick as they would otherwise need to be.

Pioneered by Kepa Morgan and his team

from the University’s School of Engineering, this material was designed with the aim of providing affordable high-quality housing for Māori on Māori land. After it was developed with funding help from the Foundation for research Science and Technology (FrST), the next step was to ascertain whether the new construction system would fit in with the needs and values of Mäori communities.

Enter ngā Pae o te Māramatanga, the University’s Māori centre of research Excellence which has a real potential to make a difference in practical ways. Through its contestable research funding system, nga Pae financed the construction of the two buildings.

outcomes have been positive, to say the least.

rESEArCh

Above: Joint directors of ngä Pae o te Märamatanga Tracey McIntosh and Michael Walker.


“Both these structures have become very important to the people in the communities,” says Kepa.

The rural one at Waimango, originally intended as a modest laundry and store-shed, instead has become the building of highest status on the land – a whare tupuna, where the elders prefer to sleep when they visit.

“It proved to be the coolest and most comfortable,” says Kepa. “And the elders said they loved sleeping in a building made from the earth on which the ancestors had shed their blood and sweat to retain it for future generations.”

The school building at Piripono also took a leap from its intended status as motor mower shed to serve the much more highly regarded function of art, craft and music room.

research is continuing on the new material, with a complete house now being constructed at rotoiti, along with a “control” house built by conventional means. The two will be monitored by occupants for temperature, humidity and general comfort. At the same time secondary school science students are benefiting from the research through a web-based teaching programme in the Mäori language – created by a group of educational researchers.

This is just a small example of the work of ngā Pae o te Māramatanga – one of seven centres of research Excellence hosted by universities around the country. Set up and funded by the Government, the centres aim to support the quality of scholarship in key areas of strength, by combining the efforts of a critical mass of researchers from different institutions.

ngā Pae, which has grown considerably since it was created in 2002, now combines the energies of researchers from all eight new Zealand universities, two wānanga (Māori tertiary institutions), two museums, one crown research Institute (Landcare research), Waikato raupatu Lands Trust and Te Tauihu o ngā Wānanga.

The vision that unified these very different organisations is the transformation of society and the economy, says Professor Michael Walker (Whakatōhea), joint director of ngā Pae o te Māramatanga.

This means encouraging research that can make a difference, capacity building to keep extending the output of quality research, and knowledge exchange to fast-track findings into the communities and feed back information on what is valued and can lead to action.

“There has been lots of research done ‘on’ Above: Making the flax fibre.

Māori,” says Michael. “Too little of it has made a difference. However, the right kind of research, that accords with the aims and aspirations of the people, will be taken up by Māori in ways that enrich the society as a whole.”

The first task of ngā Pae was to create an environment in which its vision could come to fruition. It had four groups with which to create functional networks: the academic community, with its framework for research and scholarship; the Māori communities, essential for ensuring that research outputs would match their needs and values; the national community, particularly the Government, important for creating channels to allow research results to filter through to the policy-makers; and the international communities of academics and indigenous peoples, who could both benefit from the research and collaborate with it.

“What we had to do was create a completely new scholarly environment in which all this could happen,” says Michael. “This meant establishing student and scholarly exchanges, collaborations, publications, conferences, all of which has been accomplished. We now have an international peer-reviewed journal called AlterNative, and we run our own international conference.”

The centre has also created a system of contestable research funding open to all disciplines.

ngā Pae has already achieved some remarkable international successes, ranging from the fine arts to the sciences.

Two pieces of research funded by ngā Pae have featured in high level international scientific journals. Dr Shane Wright’s work on the rate of evolution in the tropics was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States, and reported in The Economist and The Guardian. Michael’s own work on the use of the magnetic sense in navigation by pigeons featured as the lead article in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London in May 2007 while his wider research and work in nga Pae was profiled in Science in november 2007.

research funded by ngā Pae underpinned artwork by Brett Graham and rachael rakena, exhibited at last year’s Venice Biennale.

Feedback has also been strong from the international audience, with evidence that indigenous societies overseas are watching the progress of the centre with interest.

“That’s a significant responsibility we weren’t even aware of,” says Michael. “It’s only just come to our attention through our


Both Michael and Tracey know through their own lives and work and their contact with other researchers how a Māori background can greatly enrich the perspectives of anyone conducting research.

“Mäori have to be bicultural,” says Tracey. “We really don’t have a choice. We live in this world and we have to have an understanding of Päkehä values, Päkehä institutions, Päkehä cultural notions. But also as an element of being Māori we have to understand the cultural setting of things Māori. As Māori we are privileged and are able to privilege these other ways of knowing.”

Tracey’s areas of specialisation are death and genocide, hunger, homelessness and statelessness in an international context.

“In work I’ve done on death, it was definitely an advantage that I was able to see that death was responded to differently, informed by social, political, economical and historical reasons,” she says, “I knew very clearly from my own experience that Māori and Päkehä respond to death in different ways.”

Turangawaewae is a Māori word meaning having a place to stand, a place to belong, a place to be heard, is a concept that has added depth to her study of homelessness and statelessness.

“I was looking at statelessness in regards to both the rwandan Tutsi and Jews within the pre-war period in Europe, and I used the concept of turangawaewae to elaborate a much broader sense of what homelessness and statelessness can be – not only the reality of being without shelter but also the sense of homelessness within a cultural setting, of being without a cultural anchor.”

Michael, like Tracey, grew up in a bi-cultural home. His mother is Päkehä, his father an influential and highly respected Māori leader, Emeritus Professor ranginui Walker.

As a child Michael grew accustomed to “living in parallel worlds”.

“often it wasn’t worth telling my classmates what I’d done on the weekend, because they had no conception of it,” he says.

HHUOA_1001_P

To get to the top, you need to be guided by the best. Talk to Hesketh Henry, one of New Zealand’sleading law firms about our Spark! initiative, designed to help lawyers starting out in their careers to make the most of their abilities. Call Justin Cox on 09 375 8747 or visit www.heskethhenry.co.nz

now one of the world’s foremost researchers in the navigational system of animals, Michael gives full credit to his dual cultural heritage and to the Māori intellectual tradition in enriching his scientific career.

“I study animal navigation – long distance travel; how animals find their way. Just as with [famous European navigator] captain James cook, and with [famous Polynesian navigator] Kupe, an animal has to know its present location, and has to set a course towards a goal and find it.

“captain cook and Kupe did it in strikingly different ways, but at the most fundamental level the methods they used reduced the world into two numbers, equivalent to a latitude and a longitude. And both systems work.”

This he knows through personal experience – of exploring the coast of new Zealand by boat, and of sailing between islands in the tropics where the Pacific system was developed.

“I am certain in the knowledge that there is more than one way of solving the navigation problem. And if there is more than one way, there is every reason to believe there may be more than two. So it’s just a case of asking the right questions.

“Māori live both inside and outside mainstream society. If they’re working in a matrix situation, as in the University, most of the time they will be doing what anyone else does. But when they go out into the Māori world, they enter a parallel universe where people often behave in very different ways.

“That expands the mind, makes it flexible – and privileged – because when you look from two different points of view, you see different things.”

rESEArCh

international research advisory panel.”one of the founding aims of ngā Pae o

te Māramatanga was to have 500 Māori enrolments or completions of PhDs in new Zealand within five years.

In 2002 it seemed an ambitious goal: Māori then enrolled in doctoral study numbered fewer than 100, with completions over the previous century amounting to less than half that number.

However, by early last year and ahead of target the magic figure of 500 had been reached, with completed doctoral theses by Mäori now in the hundreds.

one example that stands to benefit Māori is a PhD thesis in clinical psychology by Dr Melissa Taitimu (Te rarawa, Te Aupouri) on Māori ways of understanding experiences commonly diagnosed as symptoms of schizophrenia. Her conclusion that these were often in sharp contrast with psychiatric ways of explaining the experiences led her to a raft of recommendations on diagnosis and treatment.

“The quantum leap in PhD enrolments will be one of the lasting legacies of ngā Pae o te Māramatanga,” says Michael Walker. He set up the centre with Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith, who is now Pro Vice-chancellor, Mäori, at the University of Waikato.

Linda’s replacement as joint director is Dr Tracey McIntosh (Tuhoe), a senior lecturer in Sociology at The University of Auckland who passionately shares Michael’s view of the transformative power of research and the value a Māori perspective can offer to scholarship across the disciplines.

“The quantum leap in PhD enrolments will be one of the lasting legacies of ngā Pae o te Māramatanga.”


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To get to the top, you need to be guided by the best. Talk to Hesketh Henry, one of New Zealand’sleading law firms about our Spark! initiative, designed to help lawyers starting out in their careers to make the most of their abilities. Call Justin Cox on 09 375 8747 or visit www.heskethhenry.co.nz


new scholarships at The University

of Auckland are helping students

reach their potential. Story and

pictures by Angela Pearse.

nineteen-year-old Bojan Blazevic, one of two winners of the cecil Segedin Scholarship in Engineering Science, is not resting on his laurels.

obviously bright and very capable, he tells me that as part of his Bachelor of Engineering he wants to go on an exchange to the University of Toronto in semester two. When I ask why he becomes animated and explains that in Toronto he will be able to study aspects of engineering science that aren’t taught at The University of Auckland, such as aerospace engineering.

overseas study is an exciting prospect for a student just out of high school but in Bojan’s case it has become a reality because of scholarship funding that recognises his potential. Set up in 2007, the cecil Segedin Scholarship offers a $5,000 lump sum payout for first-year students who have achieved academically, contributed to their school and community, and face financial hardship.

“receiving the scholarship has definitely taken some weight off my shoulders for financing the Toronto exchange,” says Bojan.

For many University students, financing their programme of study is a pressing issue. rising fees, student loans and the cost of living can make undertaking tertiary education a stressful experience. Financial assistance is important in enabling many students to complete a degree without incurring significant debt.

It is this growing monetary need that has seen the number of scholarships available at The University of Auckland increase exponentially in recent years. In 2007, for

PhiLAnThroPy

Lending a helping hand

example, 40 new scholarships and prizes were created.

Before the advent of the student loan scheme in the 1990s, the Scholarship office had a low profile with only a handful of scholarships on offer. These days the office, which is located in the clockTower on the city campus, administers a total of 326 official scholarships and 297 prizes (worth more than $20 million) and advertises a further 248 external awards.

The scholarships and prizes come from sponsored or industry funding and University-funded awards like The University of Auckland Doctoral Scholarship (which funds doctoral students for up to 42 months), and the suite of entry-level scholarships for students entering undergraduate study directly from school. Today assistance is even more accessible for students with academic achievement and financial need.

Marcella Mccarthy, the University’s Scholarships Manager since 2000, has enjoyed the expansion of scholarships on offer in the last seven years and the benefit this is bringing to students. “Managing the Scholarships office is very rewarding and immensely challenging because of its diversity and growth,” she says. “It is wonderful to see the generosity of

individuals, companies, government agencies and the University make such a difference to the lives of so many talented students.”

Attracting and keeping those talented students at The University of Auckland is a definitely a challenge, especially at postgraduate level. Apart from rising fees and student loans, postgraduate students face new dilemmas such as sourcing funding for overseas conferences or research trips, and juggling family and work demands. For many, trying to write a thesis in four years can be difficult.

This is why from 2006, as part of the University’s Strategic Plan 2005 -2012 to enhance its international quality graduate programme, the University increased the number of University of Auckland Doctoral Scholarships from 60 per year to more than 100. In 2008 a successful recipient of a University Doctoral Scholarship can expect to receive a $75,000 stipend over three years of study and full tuition fee coverage. In addition, they can apply for a six-month extension as can those on other approved doctoral scholarships.

one such student, currently on a Bright Futures Doctoral extension, is 26-year-old PhD student Peter Meintjes. For his PhD in


Biological Sciences, Peter is researching the evolution of cellular co-operative behaviour using experimental bacterial populations. He initially won a 36-month Bright Futures Top Achiever Doctoral Scholarship and is now taking advantage of the further six months of University funding to complete his thesis.

When asked what he would have done without his scholarship funding he replies with a grin: “I told my friends I would go to a $2 shop and buy a globe and travel to the first place my finger landed, then try and get a job.”

Peter believes students need financial incentives to continue studying at postgraduate level: “My own scholarship provided me with funds to subsist and travel. I’ve been able to attend one major overseas conference, a two-day Australian conference and one in Queenstown.”

Scholarships are also available for undergraduate students, including those new to the University. This year University levels of funding were increased to provide better support for high-quality school leavers from around the country. There are three main entry-level scholarships: The University of Auckland Scholarships, The University of Auckland chancellor’s Awards for Top Mäori and Pacific Scholars, and The University

of Auckland Alumni Scholarships. Since their inception in the early 2000s, these scholarships have supported more than 600 high achieving students.

For one University of Auckland Scholarship winner it was always going to be medicine, student loan or not. But luckily 19-year-old Emma Macdonald-Laurs won a scholarship in the 2007 round. This means fees for the duration of her undergraduate medical degree are paid for; she receives a $5,000 stipend and two trips home each year; and she has mentoring support for the first year of her degree.

A former Palmerston north Girls’ High student, Emma typifies the type of recipient The University of Auckland Scholarship rewards: highly involved in community and school activities, outstanding grades and the potential to succeed in her chosen degree.

“I was over the moon to get the scholarship,” says Emma who is now living with a group of other students in Parnell Flats near Auckland’s Domain so she can pursue her passion for running.

“I believe a balanced lifestyle is important while studying. Making time for friends and other interests is something I wouldn’t have been able to do without the scholarship, as I

would probably have been working part-time.” Asked about her future plans, her first

response is that she would like to be a GP in a rural or semi-rural district.

“But then again,” she reflects “maybe I’d like to specialise in an area of medicine I’m yet to study, perhaps paediatrics.”

For this intelligent young woman and for the many scholarships students who will follow in her footsteps, the future holds endless possibilities.

To find out more about scholarships at Auckland go to: www. auckland.ac.nz/scholarships

numbers of scholarships in 2007, 3,500 students (out of a student population of 38,500) received scholarships, prizes and awards worth more than $20 million

Above left to right: Bojan Blazevic, Peter Meintjes and Emma Macdonald-Laurs.


rESEArCh

Talking of mathematics what are the links between language and mathematics? Associate Professor Bill Barton talks to Judy

wilford about the pioneering theory behind his new book The Language of Mathematics: Telling

Mathematical Tales.

In English a car can circle a building but it can't do any rectangling or pentangling – at least not without a switch to another language.

But there are other languages, says Associate Professor Bill Barton, Head of the Department of Mathematics at the University, where shapes do behave as verbs, it is possible to speak of pentangling, and a rectangle is seen as something that rectangulates. one is the language of the navaho people of north America.

If we imagine then – as Bill does – what sort of geometry might emerge from a language where shape is seen as action, we are likely to concede that it could be quite different from the standard geometry we learned at school. The chances are it would be more dynamic, perhaps with the basic unit as a moving circle rather than a straight line.

This kind of thinking is a world away from the conventional view of mathematics as an abstract expression of universal human thought, in contrast with language which is more commonly seen as a manifestation of culture, embedded within it and emerging from it.

Instead it takes us into new philosophical territory, into a world where mathematics is a human creation and parallel mathematical worlds are possible.

"Language and mathematics are closely linked," says Bill. “They develop together and influence each other."

And this is the ground-breaking thesis of his latest book: The Language of Mathematics: Telling Mathematical Tales, published by Springer.

The book explores these links in detail, examining how languages differ in the way they express basic mathematical concepts such as number, quantity, location and relationships. It then explores the philosophical dimensions of this and, in a

fascinating final section, its implications for the effective teaching of mathematics from primary school right through to university.

When Bill returned from a stint of teaching in Africa three decades ago, he brought with him a strong conviction that language was important and that if he intended to teach in new Zealand, he had a moral imperative to learn the Mäori language, which he proceeded to do. He later became one of the first group of secondary bilingual mathematics teachers in the mid-1980s, teaching mathematics with Mäori as the medium of instruction in the bilingual unit at Wellington High School.

Bill felt privileged to be part of a critical period in Mäori language development. The experience also raised his curiosity about the nature of mathematics and informed

his later research at the University. "The most important thing that came out of that experience was a realisation that Mäori language and mathematics as I had always understood it did not fit together. That was when I became aware

on a very personal level that mathematics and language were intimately tied up with each other".

While he believes all human thoughts can be expressed in any language, Bill is also convinced that particular languages predispose their speakers to certain ways of thought.

"Given a certain language you are inclined – ‘privileged’ is the word I would use – to think in certain ways."

This brings both risks and opportunities, as he explains in the book. It also makes every language precious, just as worthy of preservation as the Bengal tiger or the mountain gorilla.

"Increasingly, the international language of mathematics is English. If the hypotheses outlined in this book are true, then the restriction of mathematics to one language

“Mathematics is a created world, a world of the imagination, a kind of academic Middle Earth.”

means some mathematical types of thinking are unlikely to occur.

"There is a richness in doing mathematics in more than one language. Every time a language is lost we lose some potential new kinds of thinking."

Bill's research on the links between language and mathematics has flowed in two directions. His book looks primarily at different languages and the ways in which they express mathematical concepts and processes. However, he has also been involved in a Marsden-funded project – in collaboration with Professor Ian reilly from the Department of Mathematics and Associate Professor Frank Lichtenberk from the Department of Applied Language Studies and Linguistics – investigating the ways research mathematicians understand the terms they use.

The participants in the study were working in topology, an extremely abstract branch of mathematics. These topologists, conducting

their research in eight different languages – czech, English, Greek, Italian, Mandarin, romanian, Spanish and Turkish – were asked to explain how they thought about their field.

Even at this advanced and immensely abstract level where the concepts appear to be tightly defined, differences occurred in the perceptions of the different language speakers, often depending on the connotations of a technical term when it had an equivalent in the language of every day. The term "open set", for example, could be thought of in different ways, depending on the "privileged" meaning of "open" in the wider language: whether the speakers were predisposed to think of it, for example, as like an open door (which can be shut), an open government (which is transparent), or an open border (which can be crossed freely).

This research formed just one piece of the jigsaw puzzle in relation to the general theme of the book. But as Bill explains, it was an important piece of the puzzle that didn't

exist elsewhere. could he have written the book without it? Yes, definitely. But is the book stronger because of it? "Significantly," he says.

Bill is Vice-President of the International commission on Mathematical Instruction and is currently on a Hood Fellowship at oxford University, where he is co-ordinating a major writing project involving an international group of research mathematicians and mathematics educators.

Talking to Bill gives a strong sense of his passion for mathematics, and for mathematical education.

If maths is a creative human activity rather than a set of finite rules waiting to be discovered, this has pedagogical implications. An important one, in Bill's view, is that "play" and exploration need to be more highly valued at all levels.

Play is encouraged at the elementary levels of arithmetic in primary schools, then vanishes, to be replaced throughout high school and through undergraduate studies with an unremitting focus on acquiring knowledge and skills.

It re-emerges only at postgraduate level and beyond, where, for mathematical researchers, it becomes the centre of the creative part of their work.

"Mathematics is a created world, a world of the imagination, a kind of academic Middle Earth," says Bill with a smile.

"research mathematicians play with abstractions. They make things up. And then they manipulate things in their made-up world to see what happens. It's much more creative than making up a game. often they're making up the playing field as well.”

Another question Bill is asking as a result of his research and hypotheses is about the place of the concrete in mathematical teaching and the possible dangers of relying too much on concrete examples as a base from which to move to the abstract.

"Mathematical thinking is about relationships between abstractions. Teachers aim to help learners manipulate abstract concepts. But what do we do when children have trouble with maths? We go back to the concrete."

A much more useful approach, Bill believes, would be to give learners more practice with the abstract, perhaps by drawing maps or plans of houses, or playing games with sequences of numbers, to see what happens and find patterns but without any expectation of a "correct" result.

"Learners need to get used to numbers being things to play with because that's what mathematicians do."


�0 | The University of Auckland

rESEArCh

Anna Kavan’s “real” new Zealand A ground-breaking doctoral

thesis raises important questions

about the place of 20th century

British writer Anna Kavan in

new Zealand’s literary canon.

Author Jennifer Sturm talks to

Tess redgrave.

In 1943 London’s avant-garde literary magazine Horizon published a scathing attack on the socio-cultural features of post-colonial new Zealand.

Its people are “living in temporary shacks, uneasily, as reluctant campers too far from home,” claimed British writer Anna Kavan who had just returned to London after 18 months living in Torbay on Auckland’s north Shore.

“The women look like fine sturdy specimens, like professional tennis players, but walking around their houses and down to the shops is about as much as their energy runs to. The men look hearty and tough, but when you get to know them they seem depleted somehow, frustrated perhaps, and dissatisfied.”

The scandalous essay caused a stir both in London and down under and became firmly linked with the prolific writer, artist and heroin addict for the rest of her life. When Kavan died in 1968, having produced some 19 books notably the award-winning post-apocalyptic Ice, there was little reason to suspect that she anything other than loathed new Zealand.

And that might have been the way it stayed but for University of Auckland research Fellow

Left: Anna Kavan circa 1941.

Jennifer Sturm. In 2004 Jennifer embarked on a PhD in English looking at the writing of two “transients” on the periphery of new Zealand’s early literary scene: Anna Kavan and Greville Textidor (who had also lived on the north Shore in the 1940s).

Jennifer’s first port of call was to visit the Kavan Archive held in the McFarlin Library at the University of Tulsa in oklahoma. Within three days she had made the sort of discovery most academics can only dream of. Among the drafts of Kavan’s published works, book reviews and personal papers was a dusty, unpublished manuscript of 18 short stories spanning 195 pages. called Five Months Further, the manuscript was an autobiographically-oriented collection of short stories that recounted in great detail the writer’s 1940s sojourn in new Zealand. What was most startling was that their tone and subject matter told a very different story about the place of new Zealand in Kavan’s affections.

“They were at absolute odds with the Horizon article,” says Jennifer. “Instead you sensed from them that she really loved new Zealand, that she admired everything about us.”

Encouraged by her thesis supervisor,

Associate Professor of English Peter Simpson, Jennifer copied all the stories and headed home to focus her PhD solely on understanding Anna Kavan’s “real” new Zealand and its place in her post-war autobiographical fiction.

Born in cannes in 1901, Anna Kavan was a troubled soul with a fragile grip on sanity. She was addicted to heroin most of her adult life and romantically attached to numerous men (“one of those blondes who travels around the world with her knees behind her ears,” once quipped new Zealand poet Denis Glover).

renowned as an experimental and disturbing writer concerned with the inner mindscape, Kavan has been compared to Virginia Woolf and Jean rhys and even described as “Kafka’s sister” – a reflection of her angst-ridden themes.

She was also an inveterate traveller and her life took an interesting turn in 1939 when she met expatriate Englishman and new Zealand conscientious objector Ian Hamilton and eventually followed him to new Zealand arriving in Auckland aboard the S.S. Mariposa, on 21 February 1941.

Ingenio Autumn 2008 | �1

The lovers set up house together on a rocky promontory in Torbay calling their property Waitahanui after the Mäori word meaning “deep water on both sides”.

For Kavan the word waitahanui became synonymous with Torbay; she even calls one of the stories in Five Months Further “Waitahanui Society”. In it she writes with great affection about the real life characters of Torbay: Lord clarke, for example, who “would drive in a state to a field half a mile down the road to supervise the milking of three brown cows … sitting bolt upright Like (sic) nero in his chariot”. or “Mr Brown who had once lost an arm in a sawmill … and had caused the stump to be fitted with an ingenious contrivance into which he screwed various gadgets, such as blades for opening oysters”. She portrays “old Spin, a carefree tall man with a loud singing voice” and “Miss Pendlaton, an elderly little sparrowy woman whose legs were so thin that her stockings looked as if they’d been pleated into her shoes”.

Jennifer says in the unpublished manuscript the real names are authentically written then crossed out and changed. During her PhD research she discovered that descendants of some of the people Kavan wrote about in “Waitahanui Society” are still living in Torbay today.

“Apparently Kavan used to go up to the little post office in Torbay and sit on a stool outside in the sun writing,” adds Jennifer. “She called it ‘wool gathering’ as she sat there and picked up the local mythology, stories about murders and suicide and all the intrigue going on.”

While in new Zealand Kavan’s social milieu included left-wing lawyer Frank Haigh, architect Vernon Brown, photographer clifton Firth and numerous members of north Shore’s burgeoning literary scene. In another of the unpublished stories called “october”, Jennifer discovered “Kavan’s slightly condescending, tongue-in cheek” account of meeting an unnamed new Zealand writer – almost certainly Frank Sargeson.

“In Takapuna we encountered a man whom we knew, a writer of new Zealand stories, walking along the street,” Kavan writes. “Standing with his hands in his pockets and his foot on the running board, the writer began to tell us about an American publisher who had written to him. He likes my stories, he said. He likes the new Zealand touch. He said in his letter, This guy can write like a fool.”

other unpublished stories in Five Months Further offer a unique social commentary on new Zealand during wartime. “The Home

Guardsmen set to work on the beach,” Kavan writes in “Any Day”. “The dry sand was under their feet, full of broken shells; the blue sky was over their heads, full of warmth. And in their hands were the unmanageable and disobliging materials for frustrating the Japanese.”

“no other woman has written about new Zealanders’ wartime experiences like this,” claims Jennifer. “These stories are about

ordinary people and how they coped, going about their lives at home during the war.”

In late 1942, Ian Hamilton was threatened with prison for his conscientious objector stance. In response Kavan hastily left new Zealand aboard the Trojan Star, a dilapidated cargo ship with ten royal new Zealand Air Force pilots aboard bound for the war-torn skies of Europe via the north Pole.

over the next 13 years Kavan and Hamilton regularly exchanged letters. In another instance of the serendipity that has hovered over Jennifer’s thesis research, Duncan Hamilton, Ian’s son, lodged a box of some 200 letters from Kavan with the Alexander Turnbull Library just weeks before Jennifer was due to fly down to check Kavan references.

“The letters are a thesis in themselves,” she says. “They describe wartime London: how Kavan’s apartment was bombed and her queuing for employment, housing and food.”

But overwhelmingly the letters fuelled Jennifer’s sense that Kavan had in fact held new Zealand and its people in great affection.

“How are the aubergines coming?” Kavan asks Hamilton in a letter dated 14 February 1943 and addressed c/- Barclay’s Bank, Piccadilly circus. “Did the tui ever take a bath? How is Miss ring wood? [Miss Pendalton] Lord crumpet? [Lord clarke] old Spin? Everybody in Torbay Society? It pretty well breaks my heart to remember the place and talking to you and sitting out in the sun. What world was that?”

So why did Kavan write that disparaging Horizons essay?

“Kavan’s offering has a bored ‘been here,

done that’ sense, understandable as a defence mechanism to explain her departure from the region,” concludes Jennifer in her thesis “Fictionalising the facts: an exploration of the ‘place’ of Aotearoa/new Zealand in the post-war autobiographical fiction of Anna Kavan”.

“If new Zealand was utopian, albeit only utopian-in-contrast, as might be popularly believed, her readers may ask why she left.”

Another explanation may be that while Kavan was in new Zealand she was “clean” of heroin but by the time she wrote the Horizons article she was hooked again.

In the closing line of her thesis Jennifer suggests that just as Kavan’s “body craved the temporary physical high of a heroin dose, back in London her mind continued to crave what was a temporary psychological high in ‘Waitahanui.’”

For Jennifer, who is currently lecturing in the University’s English Department, the three-year journey into the life and writing of Anna Kavan has been “strangely compelling” – and she is not finished yet. now that her thesis is bound, she hopes to get Five Months Further into print.

“Kavan’s work belongs in the body of new Zealand writing no less than that of Katherine Mansfield,” she contends.

“These unpublished stories offer a much softer, more accessible version of Kavan,” she adds. “Fans might have trouble with them; they’re so glaringly different, so benign.

“But Kavan drops her guard in these stories in a way she doesn’t anywhere else.”

“Kavan’s work belongs in the body of new Zealand writing no less than that of Katherine Mansfield.”

Above: Jennifer Sturm.

�2 | The University of Auckland

ALUMni ProFiLE

Prosecuting rwandan war crimes

genocide and crimes against humanity have long been legal stock in trade for Auckland alumnus Jonathan Moses (LLB/BCom 1985).

He has spent nearly seven years in Tanzania helping to prosecute those crimes and also war crimes committed in rwanda during 1994.

Jonathan is a Senior Trial Attorney with the International criminal Tribunal for rwanda (IcTr), leading a team of lawyers from various countries.

His cases include one against a priest, Father Seromba, accused of participating in the destruction of his parish church. Almost all the 2000 refugees who had taken refuge there were killed after the church was bulldozed, at Father Seromba’s go ahead, in mid-April 1994.

The priest was convicted of genocide and extermination and a recent appeal has confirmed this.

Jonathan was earlier involved in the prosecution of six accused from the Butare province in southern rwanda. This has turned into the longest running trial at the tribunal and is expected to finish this year. Upwards of 200,000 people, mainly Tutsi, were killed in the Butare region during April to July 1994.

Those accused include a former government minister (who is the only woman to have been indicted in the international criminal tribunals), her son who is alleged to have been a militia leader, two former governors of the province, and two regional mayors.

Last year Jonathan led and completed the prosecution of the former governor of Kigali Ville, Tharcisse renzaho who was charged with being instrumental in the genocidal plan to kill Tutsi in the capital rwanda. An estimated 150,000 to 200,000 people died. The judgment is due in the middle of this year.

Encouragement from Treasa Dunworth, now a senior lecturer in the Law School, prompted Jonathan to seek war crimes work. returning to new Zealand from The Hague she suggested he consider applying to one

of the Un tribunals which would combine his interests in criminal law with international law.

“She gave me a Un website to check out,” he remembers. “Every few months I would look there for any openings. one day a job came up and I was eventually offered a position here in Arusha at the IcTr.”

Tanzania is “a fabulous country and very beautiful”, says Jonathan. He has lived in Arusha since 2001 with his family – wife Joanne, who does voluntary work as a doctor in a local hospital and among the local community, and children Jessica aged 17, Phoebe aged 14 and christopher aged 12. Arusha, a large and ever expanding town, is about an hour from Mount Kilimanjaro, two hours from ngorongoro crater and four hours from the Serengeti plains.

There is a small but thriving Kiwi community in and around Arusha, says Jonathan. Andra Mobberley, an Auckland law graduate (LLB 1988), was a trial attorney based in the IcTr office of the Prosecutor in Arusha until she returned to new Zealand recently. Susan Lamb, an otago graduate and former rhodes Scholar, works in chambers while another new Zealander is an experienced and able court reporter.

From time to time Auckland law students work at the IcTr on an internship. new Zealand teachers, safari operators, VSA volunteers and missionaries live in and around Arusha.

Jonathan intends returning to new Zealand, probably at the end of this year, but is unsure what path his future career will take. “I would like if possible to maintain some international focus to my work.”

His legal career has not taken a traditional path. criminal law was the subject he enjoyed most in his legal studies. After graduating in 1985 he worked in the litigation department of Wallace McLean Bawden and Partners (later Kensington Swan).

He was one of the founding solicitors at the Mangere community Law centre along with Andrew Becroft (now chief Youth court Judge), and worked there from 1986 to 1989.

After leaving the Law centre he spent a year in England, then a few months with another Auckland firm before joining South Auckland chambers where he worked as a barrister sole for about 10 years. He also held a part-time appointment with the refugee Status Appeals Authority from 1996 to 2001, when he joined the IcTr.

By Bill williams

Ingenio Autumn 2008 | ��

Joshua Bayliss (BA 1996, LLB 1996) is working as the Group General counsel for richard Branson’s Virgin Management Ltd. Based in London, Joshua is responsible for legal functions, advising senior executive committee and for VML’s role in group-legal matters, principally acquisitions, disposals, JVs and other commercial contracts, and litigation. He is also responsible for group company secretarial and intellectual property functions, and management of external legal panel.

Victoria Fray (BA 1998, BE 2000) was in the media recently for project-managing the design and construction of a cutting edge mini-desalination plant for new Zealand red cross. The portable desalination machine is small and robust enough to be sent to remote Pacific Islands to provide 3m3 of water for up to 200 people in an emergency – then be hauled back to Auckland ready for use in the next disaster.

Victoria, an environmental engineer for opus consultants, is one of 80 Kiwi experts in water and sanitation, health and other specialist fields who are on standby to go on emergency missions for the red cross. Her first assignment was to the small island of Ambae in Vanatu when Mt Manaro began erupting ash just before christmas in 2004.

James harrison (BA 2000, BMus (hons) 2000) plays the role of Father in nBr new Zealand opera’s nationwide tour of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel beginning at the end of June. After a year as an Emerging Artist with nBr new Zealand opera, James studied with Margaret Kingsley at the royal college of Music in London. He then went on to the national opera Studio and has sung with the likes of Sir David Willcocks (Messiah) at the royal Albert Hall,

the choir of King’s college, cambridge, the classical opera company at the Barbican and Peter Schreier (Weihnachts oratorium) at St John’s Smith Square. James has performed in numerous operatic roles and returned to new Zealand last year to sing Valentin in the nBr Zealand opera’s season of Faust.

nigel Latta ( MPhil 1995, PgDipClinPsych 1995) is entertaining parents up and down the country with his one-man show “The Politically Incorrect Parenting Show”. Billed as a blend of off-the-wall humour and battlefield wisdom, the show shares insights nigel has gained from working with some of new Zealand’s most gifted and troubled kids.

nigel is based in Dunedin and is a practising clinical psychologist, speaker and author of several books, notably Into the Darklands: Unveiling the Predators Among Us, a non-fiction book about his work with adult and adolescent offenders, and a parenting book and bestseller Before Your Kids Drive You

Crazy Read This. To find out more about nigel go to his website: www.goldfishwisdom.co.nz

Dr Penelope ridings (BA 1978, LLB (hons) 1978, MJur 1979) is new Zealand’s new ambassador to Poland. The former head of the Trade Unit at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Dr ridings took up the new posting this month. While in Poland she will also be accredited to the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Victoria Simonsen (BMus 2003) recently won the Strings section at the royal overseas League (roSL) Annual Music competition in the UK. The competition is open to commonwealth instrumentalists and singers up to, and including, the age of 30 working or studying in the UK. Victoria, an accomplished cellist, is a former new Zealand Young Musician of the Year and new Zealand Performer of the Year. She has been living in the UK since 2002 and working both nationally and internationally as a soloist and chamber musician.

As one of five section finalists in the roSL awards, she will now compete for first prize and the gold medal at the roSL Finals competition at Queen Elizabeth Hall, on Monday 19 May.

william Trubridge (BSc 2001), a world record-breaking freediver, will attempt to dive to a world record 84m – without fins – at Deans Hole, in the Bahamas later this year. William has been freediving since he finished his degree. Last year he broke the world record for constant weight freediving without fins, descending to 82m; but the record was snatched off him by Austrian Herbert nitsch, who also holds the record for constant weight (with fins) of 111m.

ALUMni SnAPShoTS

James Harrison.

�� | The University of Auckland

ALUMni nEwS

THE ProDIGAL FELLoW rETUrnS

of the many distinguished visitors who came to the University in 2007, hood Fellow and alumnus Stephen Chan (BA 1972, MA 1976) perhaps garnered the most attention.

During his two-week visit late last year the new Zealand-born chinese scholar, author and poet lectured to fully-subscribed, captivated audiences on subjects that traversed the psychological complexities of robert Mugabe, the relationship between Africa and china, and the future of South Africa.

Born in Auckland in 1949 to chinese refugee parents, Stephen earned a masters degree in Political Studies under the tutelage of the department’s inaugural Professor, robert chapman. For that reason, Stephen – currently Professor of International relations in the University of London, and foundation Dean of Law and Social Sciences at the School of oriental and African Studies – also delivered the annual chapman lecture, entitled “The perplexing and complex enigma of Mugabe: rightly atrocious or atrociously right?”.

Stephen was part of the commonwealth observer Group that monitored Zimbabwe’s transition to independence in 1980 and he has worked as an international civil servant in the UK and Africa. He described the chapman lecture as the most important of his career.

“When Professor chapman was my lecturer at the University we fought like cat and dog. He won, and I owe him a debt which I hope in part to repay. This lecture is a privilege for me and one I value above all others I have given on five continents.”

Stephen left new Zealand in 1976, returning only sporadically over the ensuing decades. His Hood Fellowship marked his first visit in eight years. A prolific writer, Stephen has penned a memoir of his visit to Auckland which can be viewed on www.alumni.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/for/alumni/news/stephen-chan-memoir.cfm

noTiCEBoArD

125TH ALUMnI JUBILEE EVEnTS The theme of our Alumni and Friends events for 2008 is “celebrating Alumni” to mark 125 years of excellence and achievement in our Jubilee year.

Events for 2008: Auckland (Graduation concert) Friday 9 MayLondon Tuesday 20 Maynew York Thursday 22 MaySydney Thursday 24 JulyWhangarei Wednesday 6 AugustHong Kong Friday 10 octoberBeijing Tuesday 14 octoberShanghai Thursday 16 octoberSeoul Saturday 18 octoberWellington Wednesday 12 novemberAuckland (Golden Graduates) Thursday 27 november

For more information or to ensure you receive an invitation to an event being held in your area please visit www.alumni.auckland.ac.nz and update your details.

THE ALUMnI cArEErS nETWorKAre you interested in talking to current students about your job?

The University’s Alumni careers network is seeking more alumni to join its register and be available to help students who are in the process of making decisions about their future career path. In particular the network has a shortage of alumni from bioscience, biotechnology and the food technology fields as well as those in creative arts and industries and working for nGos.

The network currently has about 150 names on its books and is coordinated by the University’s careers centre. Students can contact a network member only after they have been referred by a University careers consultant. Meetings usually last for less than an hour and during that time students ask questions about the skills used, the ups and downs of the job, and how to enter the field. Alumni can stipulate the number of students they see each year.

“I get a kick out of being able to help students in a practical way and show them what happens in my job on a daily basis,“ says alumna naomi Johnstone ( BA 1975), a human resources manager at Auckland Diagnostic Medlab. naomi sees on average about three students a year.

If you are interested in registering with the Alumni careers network, please contact University careers centre on +64 9 373-7599, ext 88727 or email [email protected]

HoST InTErnATIonAL STUDEnTS For DInnEr

If you live in Auckland would you consider hosting two to three international students for dinner one evening?

The Alumni relations office, in conjunction with The University of Auckland Society and Auckland International, is offering dinner in a new Zealand home to new international students at the start of each University semester.

“It’s lots of fun and a very positive thing to do,” says alumna Eva Tollemache (BA 1994), who hosted two groups of students last year and has put her name down to host another this year.

For both groups, Eva prepared “a quintessential roast and salad” which the students seemed to appreciate. She and her family also spent time talking to their guests about Auckland and new Zealand.

“It was a very good networking and exchange experience for all of us,” she concludes.

If you are interested in hosting students to dinner contact Judith Grey by email: [email protected] or telephone: +64 9 373-7599 ext 82309.

DISTInGUISHED ALUMnI AWArDS noMInATIonS For 2009Have you considered nominating other alumni for a Distinguished Alumni Award? nominations close for 2009 on 31 July 2008. The awards are presented at the University’s Distinguished Alumni Awards Dinner each March. Visit www.alumni.auckland.ac.nz for more information and to download an application form.

InTErnATIonAL ALUMnI nETWorKIf you live in or near any of the areas below and would like to be involved with local alumni, we encourage you to make contact with your volunteer alumni co-ordinator.

Australia Brisbane – Allanah Johnston [email protected] Melbourne – rupert Saint [email protected] Perth – Margaret Sims, [email protected] Sydney – George Barker, [email protected]

Canada Calgary – Allison Hall, [email protected] – nigel Toy, [email protected]

China Beijing – Yang Jiao, [email protected] Chengdu – Hua Xiang, [email protected] hong Kong – raymond Tam [email protected] Shanghai – Paul rothville, [email protected]

Europe germany – Philipp Schuster [email protected] – Duncan Lithgow [email protected] – Ken Bauer, [email protected] Ken also welcomes contact from alumni in Europe where there is no coordinator in their area.

india Chandigarh – rahul Gautam [email protected]

indonesia Jakarta – John Wishart, [email protected]

israel ofir Goren, [email protected]

Japan Tokyo – Simon Hollander, [email protected]

Korea Seoul – nalin Bahuguna, [email protected]

Malaysia Kuala Lumpur – Kc Yong, [email protected]

Singapore Von chan, [email protected]

Taiwan Taipei – Mago Hsiao, [email protected]

UK London – cecilia Tarrant [email protected]

USA new hampshire – rushan Sinnaduray [email protected] york – rosena Sammi [email protected] Philadelphia – nai-Wei Shih, [email protected] Francisco – Sue Service [email protected] – Jyoti Maisuria, [email protected] washington, DC – ruby Manukia [email protected]

Ingenio Autumn 2008 | ��


ArT

Speaking of art: greatest hits from the University Art CollectionBegun in 1966 with Keith Sinclair’s prescient purchase of two drawings by Colin McCahon, The University of Auckland Art Collection is now the largest of its kind in new Zealand. it comprises more than 1,000 art works, most of which can be found hanging somewhere in a building across the University’s four main campuses.

Alumni will remember glancing up from the photocopiers in the General Library to catch sight of Mccahon’s joyous “Let us possess one world” (1955) or being greeted in the stairwell of the Arts Building by the silent cawing of Don Binney’s “Arts-commerce Kaka” (1984), its wings spread in flight, showing bright rosy plumage underneath the green.

A selection of more than 30 of the art collection’s finest works have been gathered together to go on display at the Gus Fisher Gallery for six weeks during April and May to celebrate the University’s 125th Jubilee. Entitled Art Speak, after the text in Paul Hartigan’s eponymous neon sculpture in the Engineering Faculty’s foyer window which dates from 1997, the exhibition spans more than 60 years of modern art practices and examines the stories behind the making of this art collection.

Dating from 1944, Frances Hodgkins’ oil

on board “The courtyard in Wartime” is one of the most important works in the exhibition. It was purchased by art historian Eric Mccormick in 1974 in Britain on behalf of the collection. originally titled “courtyard by night”, it shows the vulnerability of the artist’s historic home at corfe castle in Dorset as Lancaster bombers fly on missions overhead, and the ground shakes with the rumble of tanks and armoured vehicles on their way to the south coast.

Painted in oils a quarter of a century later, richard Killeen’s “Man, Window and Awning” (1968) comments on the homogeneity of suburbia and its oppressive effects on the be-suited Everyman it envelops, while Tony Fomison’s “Wait” (1974) uses religious symbolism to protest the Vietnam war. Histories of the land, its people and conflicts are denoted in Buck nin’s “rangitoto” (1984), Shane cotton’s “Tunatown Dreaming Moerewa” (2001) and ralph Hotere’s “Black rainbow” (1987).

Photography now plays a major role in the collection. recognition of the significance of the medium in contemporary art practice has resulted in the recent acquisition of works by Bill culbert, Anne noble, Peter Peryer, Edith Amituanai and Boyd Webb. Even more modern is the digital manipulation of media

as seen in the works of Hye rim Lee, Jae Hoon Lee and Yuk King Tan.

Using lightboxes to illuminate images is another recent innovation, and the exhibition includes a work by the et al collective entitled “the fundamental rekenen” (2006). Using found text and related to “The Fundamental Practice”, the et al collective’s controversial installation created for the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005, this series of work is described by collective member (and current Elam School of Fine Arts staffer) p. mule as questioning the authority of the viewer/object/site interchange.

Another headline-grabbing work in the exhibition is charles Frederick Goldie’s “Planning revenge: Portrait of Hori Pokai” (1923). Gifted by a canadian benefactor to the University in 2006, this precious painting was stolen from the General Library in early January 2007. It was unearthed last november, and after conservation treatment and glazing, has now been returned to the University. Though mute, the Goldie “speaks” of its adventures through Art Speak investigating the stories behind The University of Auckland Art collection.

Linda Tyler, director of the University’s Centre for new Zealand Art research and Discovery

Ingenio Autumn 2008 |��

The Carver and the ArtistThis book charts the growth and development of the Mäori modernist art that emerged from the rapid urbanisation of Mäori in the mid-twentieth century and the complex transition of Mäori cultural and social structures from a rural to an urban setting.

compiled and written by alumnus Damian Skinner (BA 1994, MA 1997), The Carver and the Artist: Mäori Art in the Twentieth Century is a story of the conflict between tradition and innovation – two seemingly incompatible but not always opposing positions that were the source of a great upswelling of creativity. Artists like Arnold Wilson, Para

Matchitt and Selwyn Muru constructed a Mäori art that reacted against the customary culture and attempted to respond to the modern world in which they lived.

The book, published by Auckland University Press (AUP), includes a rich selection of reproductions of Mäori modernist art, many of which are not widely known and often from the artists’ own collections.

ALUMni BooKS

Book Self For more than 40 years, Emeritus Professor and Distinguished Alumnus Karl (c.K.) Stead (BA 1954, MA 1955, DLitt 1982) has been new Zealand’s leading literary and cultural critic. Whether writing about christianity or a trip to croatia, Karl always brings a clear personal point of view, a strong analytical bent and a witty pen to his work. In this latest collection of critical writing he takes the reader on a personal journey, from his earliest discovery of poetry as a young man to his experiences on the literary trail over the last few years.

For the first time, Karl includes a series of journal extracts that allow readers closer to the mind of the writer: “Here the ego is exposed – not quite naked, but now and then with its shirt off.”

In Book Self: The Reader as Writer and the Writer as Critic, published by AUP, we see a great new Zealand critic at work – a writer with strong personal views about other writers and a deep commitment to the role of criticism in literary life.

Back and Beyond Since Mäori first painted moa and mythical birds on cave walls, artists in Aotearoa new Zealand have provided an imaginative, lively account of the lives we’ve been leading, the dreams we’ve been dreaming and the stories we’ve been telling. Alongside works painted during the 19th and 20th centuries, Back and Beyond: New Zealand Painting For The Young and Curious by alumnus Gregory o’Brien (BA 1994), published by AUP, features art by contemporary painters and printmakers, all of them seasoned travellers across time and space.

The Face of warone hundred thousand new Zealanders went overseas to the First World War – many bearing Kodak cameras.

The Face of War: New Zealand’s Great War Photography, published by AUP, is the first book to examine the vernacular photos of the First World War taken by its new Zealand participants. Alumna Sandy callister (BA (Hons) 2002, PhD History 2006) discusses how photography was used to capture and narrate, memorialise and observe, romanticise and bear witness to the experiences of new Zealanders at home and overseas.

Photography can be used both to record a true picture and to disguise the unpalatable. Sandy’s discussion not only argues for the importance of new Zealand photography to the history of war, it also examines in depth the contradictions of war photography: as a site of remembrance and forgetting; nation and sacrifice; mourning and mythology; subjectivity and identity.

in briefAustralia–Who Cares? published by network Books, Australia research Institute, curtin University of Technology. Alumnus David callahan (BA 1974, MA 1980) edits a collection of 19 articles dealing with discourses and practices of caring in Australia. The book incorporates discussion of immigration and asylum seekers, indigenous Australians, multiculturalism and the environment, and the representation of these issues in photography, media, literature and policy. Underpinning these considerations is the question of Australia itself: what makes this country what it is? Books can be purchased at www.api-network.com

Retire Right: A New Zealand guide to planning for financial security and prosperity in your retirement, published by new Holland. If you are looking for help and encouragement on putting money aside for your later years, you will find it in Retire Right, by alumna Joy Scandlyn (Bcom 1989). Her book covers such issues as how much money is needed; superannuation and savings help from the government; risk profiling; choosing investments; managed funds; whether, and how, to choose an adviser; dealing with debt; self-employment and estate planning. The book includes a cD containing calculators to help readers plot their own financial future.

Wartime Correspondence: From Peter Russell Hay Allen to his mother during the early years of WWII, published by Livadia Publishers. This book, edited and compiled by alumnus Peter Macky (LLB 1977), chronicles the life of Peter russell Hay Allen while serving in the royal navy during the Second World War through an intimate collection of letters, photographs and drawings sent to his mother, Lady Allen. Beginning with his journey to Britain to join the royal navy in 1938, Peter regularly writes to his mother detailing the events of not only his life, but those of his shipmates and friends. copies can be purchased by phoning 09 358 8726.

if you have published a book in the last six months, or will do so in the next, email the editor [email protected]


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The Auckland University Cricket Club’s first century has been a long and winding journey, but one no less distinguished for such travails.

Widely known as Varsity, much like its rugby counterparts just across the way near the Tamaki campus at colin Maiden Park, the cricket club came into being on April 6, 1908.

A general meeting on campus among enthusiasts of the game gave rise to the Auckland University college cricket club, as it was known for some 50 years. An application to the Auckland cricket Association (AcA) for the admission of the college to play in its competitions for the 1908-09 season was granted. Professor Segar, FE Baume and HJD Mahon were appointed delegates to the association.

naturally there was a strong student flavour to the early teams. The fourth Professor of classics, Herbert Stanley Dettmann, was captain of the first University premier side.

The club maintained a somewhat nomadic existence over the next 70 years, with no home ground and practices often taking place on campus in Princes Street. However, dilapidated wire netting and makeshift tennis courts didn’t deter some keen Law students, whose time management skills were tested with 8am and 4 -7pm lectures, while working fulltime. one of these was John Sparling (LLB 1963), who went on to become the fourth of University’s six

male national reps. The most recent was Mark richardson in 2004.

Sparling is held in wide respect among Auckland cricket circles. He captained the provincial side almost as long as he did his University side and is now president of the AcA which, like the University, is celebrating its 125th year.

Sparling was at the helm when the club made a home base on the Eden Park no 2 ground from 1959. They were great days for University, with a successful side full of characters such as ross Dykes (now chief executive of otago cricket), Peter Irwin, Jim riley and roger Harris. It could be a volatile mix at times. For Varsity cricket men, the game was not the only thing in their lives, but more a release on Saturdays. But Sparling, with his calm, assured captaincy and brilliant all-round skills, was able to meld the eclectic bunch into a force. The double Auckland titles in 1975 and 1976 led into the 1977 national Gillette cup knockout triumph.

Sparling’s days in the top XI were winding down, but his prolific and longstanding contributions to the Auckland University cricket club were further recognised – he is already one of eight living life members – as the club’s cricketer of the century at a marvellous gala dinner in February, the showpiece of the centenary weekend which encapsulated all that was good about the club and the people who hold it close to their heart.

SPorT

100 not out

Sparling himself was visibly moved and surprised at receiving the honour. Yet he, as much as anyone, was responsible for keeping the club’s name afloat when there was a risk University would be divested of its premier status in the 1960s because it was not a classically “district”, that is, local, club. There were no juniors to speak of, but the AcA was not going to lightly throw out the club which sported the Auckland captain.

University moved with the times by shifting to the new Merton road sporting complex in 1978, immediately gaining a junior section by amalgamating with the St Heliers club. From humble beginnings, it now boasts some of the best facilities in Auckland.

nowadays the premier and reserve teams combine with neighbours Ellerslie to form University-Ellerslie, but it is important to note that the rest of the club, including the burgeoning junior section, plays under the University of Auckland banner.

Alumnus Campbell Burnes (BA 1995, MA 1997) a former premier player and author of the centennial publication Maiden Century: 1908-2008. Copies of these are available through the Auckland University Cricket Club at www.aucc.co.nz

Left: one of the finest sides in the club’s history: the 1960-61 premiers. Above: John Sparling, the club’s cricketer of the century.

STudenT liFe

The rise and fall of Phoenixin the early 1930s, Auckland university College students launched one of new Zealand’s first literary magazines.

Phoenix was an influential literary journal published by the literary society of Auckland university college between 1932 and 1933. its first editor, James Bertram (BA 1931, dipJourn 1932, mA 1933), saw it as literary and cultural in emphasis and it certainly lived up to his expectations, featuring work by a new generation of new zealand writers, including Bertram, Allen curnow, r.A.k. mason, A.r.d. fairburn, charles Brasch and d’Arcy cresswell.

Bertram, assisted by Jean Alison, rilda gorrie, Allen curnow, d.h. monro, rona munro and Blackwood Paul, edited the first two issues in march and July 1932. Bob lowry, who was already printer of the students’ Association magazine Kiwi, became manager and printer of Phoenix and quickly demonstrated the skills which produced the Auckland university college’s 50th jubilee history in 1933 – and which remains a fine piece of printing.

James Bertram resigned to take up a rhodes scholarship at oxford in 1933, precipitating a major change in content for Phoenix. With his departure, it changed from


a relatively uncontroversial journal into a mouthpiece for more radical political views which ultimately brought about its demise. The next two issues, march and June 1933, were edited by the poet and marxist r.A.k. mason and concentrated on issues such as new zealand’s militarism, colonialism in the south Pacific and anti-semitism. The change in tone was not well received, by the college or the wider community. The journal came under public attack from the NZ Truth, which ran a front-page article criticising the left-leaning content under the headline “nz universities hotbeds of revolution. red hot gospels of highbrows”.

This was too much for the college authorities and student body of the time, which had recently experienced unrest following the use of students as special constables to control rioters, and the dismissal of lecturer J.c. Beaglehole after his criticisms of the college’s treatment of academic freedom. The Professorial Board complained that the content offended “against the canons and decency and good taste”, and paid particular attention to the slightly risqué poem by A.r.d. fairburn, “deserted farmyard”. Another poem was censored by the student executive, on similar grounds. Phoenix never reappeared and the students’ Association’s press, operated by lowry, was sold.

The journal, despite its short existence, left a lasting legacy. Phoenix provided a forum for a new generation of writers at a time when there was no similar journal in new zealand, and is widely regarded as the beginning of a distinctive national literature. it paved the way for two influential literary journals, Tomorrow and Landfall (the latter edited by charles Brasch from 1947 until 1966), and aided the development of printing and typography in new zealand under the leadership of Bob lowry.

you can find all the issues of Phoenix in the special collections department of the general library, along with related archival material such as the sir keith sinclair research papers and Bob lowry papers.

Stephen innes, Special Collections librarian.

� | The university of Auckland

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